Zoo
by Aroara Starrunner
Summary: This is my OC in Zoo. I have recently became addicted to the show and wanted to do a fanfiction as you can probably guess my OC will be with. . . Mitchell Morgan. I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING!
1. Mitchell Morgan

Less than a year ago, I had made the mistake of eating in my work station. I was eating some hamburger meat that was processed by Reiden Global. I should clarify that Reiden Global is a meat supplier that uses D grade beef from a feedlot that raised their cattle on pesticides. At the time I was eating this delicious hamburger, I was studying the DNA between a wolf and a dog. As I went to go another DNA sample, I must have bumped the DNA I was working with onto my hamburger and as you can probably guess, I ate the hamburger with the DNA sample on it. You're probably wondering, how could you not notice that you knocked over wolf DNA on your food? In my defense, it was like three o'clock in the morning. Look, all I know is that when I woke up the next day, I wasn't me. I was someone else. I was someTHING else. The chemicals from the pesticides and the wolf DNA did something to me. I became one of man's best friend. I became. . . a wolf.

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"I don't understand why I had to fly halfway across the world, Monseiur Dalvane." I spoke to the French black person that was guiding through the Tokyo Ambassy.

"You are aware of the recent animal attacks." He said, his accent thick.

"Of course, that was what got me onto the plane to come here because I was told I could help solve this problem. But I was expecting to go to some animal sanctuary, not some federal building."

"I am assembling a team and I will explain everything shortly, Miss Rycho."

"Monseiur Dalvane, you don't understand. I can't be around any other people. My condition. . ."

"I know about your condition, Miss Rycho and so do the rest of the team. Trust me. I'll explain everything shortly." I sighed and clutched my laptop bag strap tighter.

"So who are the other people on this team?"

"Abraham Kenyatta, a safari guide. Jackson Oz, an expert on animal behavior. Jamie, a journalist and Mitchell Morgan, a veternarian pathologist."

"Wonderful." Dalavane opened a glass door for me and I stepped through the door into a conference room where four other people were sitting at the table in the center of the room. A large African man with deep soulful brown eyes had to be Abraham Kenyatta. The man next to him with dark brown hair had to be Jackson Oz because he didn't look like a Mitchell. Which meant the man with the light brown shaggy hair and glasses had to be Mitchell and the woman was Jamie Campbell.

"Who's this?" Jackson asked.

"This is Miss Callana Rycho. She is a major in Animal Science Management and Behavior and zoology, specifically feline and wolves. Please, take a seat." I made my way to the far side of the table across from Mitch. As I was taking my seat, I couldn't help but keep my eyes on Mitchell. It took me a second to realize that I was staring and I quickly tore my eyes away from him and sat down. "Greetings. I apologize for all the cloak and dagger. The five of you are here because your suspicions over the last few weeks are correct. You are all aware of the lion killings in Botswana and Los Angeles. But there have also been a series of dog attacks in Slovenia."

"And Japan, hundreds of bates swarmed a plane and brought it down into the ocean." Jackson added.

"In Jakarta, three Sumatran rinoceros turned over an SUV belonging to a family of Norwegian tourists. The rhinos waited for the family- father, mother, two children- to exit the vehicle and trample them. In Wuppertal, Germany, six brown bears came out of the Kothen Forest, making their way to a playground in mid-afternoon. The massacre that followed left seven children dead and fourteen injured. Taken individually, each of these incidents can just be seen as a horrific, tragic event. I believe. . . they are evidence of something else."

"And what is that exactly?"

The global pandamic that your father believed was about to emerge. It appears. . . it has arrived."

"Sorry, his father?" Mitch inquired.

"Professor Robert Oz."

"We're all here because the scientific theories of a notorious crackpot are now coming to pass?"

"Watch it, scrawny." Abraham threatened.

"Mitch Morgan, as advertised." Delavane said.

"This is all very interesting and definitely disturbing, but none of this proves anything." Mitch said. "Certainly not the coming of the animal apocalypse."

"That's why I had Monseiur Alves bring the six of you together."

"Six?" I asked. "I'm not good at math or anything but I only count five at this table." That was when the door to the conference room opened and a tall blonde women walked in.

"This is Chloe Tousignant. She will also be working with you."

"Hello." She greeted us.

"Oh, great, another French person." I sighed, placing my face in my hands.

"Miss Tousignant will functiono as my proxy." Delavane said. "As my eyes and my ears. Every decision that is made will go through her. Miss Tousignant. . . is in charge. Something is most assuredly going on out there. All we want is for you to figure out what it is. Before it's too late."


	2. Big Cats

I sat across from Mitch with Jamie to the right of him in a coffee shop. Jamie was doing research on her computer and Mitch was writing down symptoms of the animals and when he got to the causes, he wrote a question mark. Jamie leaned over and took the pen from him and crossed out the question mark and beside it wrote, Reiden Global.

"Can we go home now?" She asked him.

"See, this is the problem with obession." Mitch said. "No room at all for the happy little gray areas."

"The world has plenty of happy little grey areas, Mitch." I said. "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the legalization of marijuana, Taylor Swift's move from country to pop. I agree with Jamie. Reiden Global seems to be a probable cause."

"All right, if Delavane is right, if what he's saying is true- And I'm not saying that it is- but if. . . then this goes way beyond what we saw with the lions in LA. What if the animals that led the attacks in China, in Europe, Africa were all infected with the same thing? This could be the beginning of a worldwide event."

"I'm pretty sure there's a reason why they're called Reiden Global." Jamie said. "They have their tentacles in everything, from pesticides to genetically-modified crop seeds. It's a one stop shop for the animal apocalypse."

"Coffee?" Abraham and Jackson walked up to the table with a tray of coffee. Jackson handed me one and I took it gingerly and carefully began to sip on it. Jackson gave Mitch his cup when Mitch didn't grab it himself.

"Thank you." Mitch said. Jackson pulled out a tablet from his bag and held it out for Mitch and I to see.

"Does any of this make sense to either one of you?" Jackson asked us. Mitch flipped through the pictures of notes about animals and scribbles in Latin.

"Interesting penmanship. Who wrote this, a seven year old on a roller coaster?" I couldn't help but laugh at that but quickly stopped and stared hard at the pictures when Mitch looked over at me.

"My father."

"Right. Well, I don't have a clue what's going on in most of these pictures, but. . . this, Felidae, Carnivora, that's b-"

"Big Cat Taxonomy." I interrupted him, getting excited that I came across something that I knew well. "Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Panthera pardus." The others just stared at us blankly.

"Leopards."

"Leopards?" Abe questioned us. "You have any idea why leopards would be important your father?"

"No." Jackson shook his head.

"Guys, change of plans." Chole came up to the table and looked at all of us. She had deep blue eyes with a soft bronze eyeshadow and waist length white blonde hair tied into a high ponytail. She had a rounded jaw and a small nose. She was about medium height and a lean figure. "We're going to Mississippi."

"Mississippi? What happened to Beijing?"

"There's been a prison fire in Biloxi Penitentiary. It appears no one survived. Not guards, not prisoners, no one."

"I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where this had to do with us." I snapped, taking another sip of my coffee.

"At the time of the fire, the prison was under attack. By wolves." My head shot straight up from my coffee cup at the word wolves.

"What are we waiting for? Let's get our asses to Mississippi."

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"So, Jackson, we'll take the sedan." Chloe instructed when we got off the plane and into the parking garage. "You guys take the SUV. You shall need the extra room."

"We shall?" Mitch and I asked in unison.

"Yes."

"Wait, why are we taking two cars?" Jackson inquired.

"Uh, you, Jamie and I will be going to the prison. A French national was being held there. We are representatives from the French embassy coming to discuss dealing with his remains."

"French embassy?" Jamie questioned her. "You're DGSE, right? French FBI? Why the false credentials?"

"Because from this moment on, we have no agency, no government affiliation. We're on our own?"

"What about Delavane?" I asked.

"Yes, Delavane is funding our operation. But beyond that, we're- How do you say _confidentiel?_ Off- off the books."

"Should I presume the reason Mitch and Callana need the extra room is because of me?" Abe chuckled. "If I wasn't such a nice guy, I might be offended.

"No. I need you three to trap a wolf."

"S- wha- sorry?" Mitch stuttered his confusion and surpise.

"Yes. I expect studying a wolf will provide answers as to what may have caused the pack-"

"No. But I don't know the first thing about trapping a wolf."

"Which is why Abraham and Callana will be going with you."

"Wait, why don't I just go with Abraham?" Jackson offered. "Abraham, Callana and I can trap a wolf."

"Genius recommendation." Mitch agreed. "I second that."

"No, no, no." Chloe denied. "I need you with me at the prison. It was ground zero for the wolf attack."

"We will need supplies." I said, knowing that there was no luck on to changing Chloe's mind.

"Yes. There's a hunting supply store down the highway. And this should cover the cost of purchases." Chloe pulled out an envelope of cash and handed it to Abraham. Okay? Let's go." We waved goodbye to Jamie and Jackson as they drove away with Chloe.

"You know, I. . . like this Chloe." Abraham said. "She's what you would call peppery."

"Yeah, I was never a big fan of peppery." Mitch muttered as we made our way to the SUV.

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"I knew that Americans enjoy hunting." Abraham said as we pushed through the crowd in the hunting store to get to the snares. "I had no idea it was this popular."

"Um, excuse me." Mitch asked a worker. "What's going on?"

"The county annouced a wolf call, because of what happened at the prison." The man answered.

"What is a wolf call?" Abraham inquired.

"That's when a bunch of men go out into the woods to hunt wolves, armed with beer and high-powered rifles." I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose, knowing that this was going to end in a disaster.

"Cause, you know, what goes better together than guns and drinking?" Mitch added, sharing the same thoughts and feelings.

"Do you have any traps or snares?" Abraham questioned the worker. "We're looking to catch a wolf. Catch, not kill."

"We might have some net guns in the back." The worker said. As we made our move to go to the back of the store, a group of men stopped us.

"You want to catch and not kill?" The man asked us. I immediately tensed up feeling the hostility rolling off these men in waves. "What are you gonna do with a rabid wolf? Gonna take it to dinner and a movie?" The other men behind him chuckled.

"Those wolves aren't rabid." Mitch explained. "See, rabid wolves don't travel in the pack. They're ostracized and forced to move alone." I stared in amazement at Mitch, awed by someone else who knew about wolves. Mitch went to go move aroud the group but the man once again stepped in his way.

"Rabid or not rabid, it doesn't really matter much. Either way they'll be dead."

"You don't have to kill them." The man made a threatening step towards Mitch.

"I'm not sure if you're from around here, friend. I'm betting not. We got farms and we got families to protect, and that's what we're gonna do."

"Actually, I'm after the same thing you are. I just don't think slaughter's necessary."

"Don't let him talk to you like that!" A man in the back of the group yelled and when the first man took another step towards Mitch, I stepped in between them and pushed them away from each other.

"Gentlemen, please." I begged. "We're not looking for any trouble. We just want to _catch_ a wolf and us doing that is none of your business, just like you killing them is none of our business. Now if you don't mind, we'll be going now. Let's go get the net gun, guys." Abraham ushered Mitch and I in front of him and we continued our path to the back of the store.

"I understand who you are now." Abraham said to Mitch. "You're the kind that pokes the beast until the beast bites."

"I had that under control." Mitch snapped.

"I don't think so, my friend. I think in another five minutes you would replaced the wolf as the focus for tomorrow's hunt."

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Abraham pulled up to a parking spot outside of the Mississippi woods to see dozen of trucks along the tree line belonging to hunters looking to kill the pack of wolves. I got out of the car and anger swept over me. Uncontrollable anger. My blood boiled in my veins and a growl rumbled in my chest. My wolf was taking over and I was having trouble controlling it. My wolf was hurt that a group of irrognant hunters were going after her species. She felt threatened and insecure and that angered her. These hunters wanted to provoke her kind then she and her kind were going to get hostile. My wolf pushed at its cage wanting to get out and howl a battle cry to the pack somewhere in the woods. My human side fought for what humanity was left inside me. I slowly walked over to one of the trucks and the more I stared at it, the angerier my wolf got.

"Callana?" Abraham's concerned voice came behind me and my wolf only snarled at him. And that snarl was the only warning she was going to give.

"Calla?" Then, Mitch's voice echoed through my ears. Calla? That was a new one. Like a Calla Lily. My favorite flower. "Calla? Are you okay?" My wolf finally sat back on her haunches but not before she let out one last growl. I took a deep breath and sighed as my human side got back in control.

"It's okay. I'm fine." I muttered before pulling out my pocket knife and flicking it open. I slammed the tip of it into the back tire of one of the trucks, the air hissing out of it. "Let's go. We got a wolf to catch." I stormed off into the woods leaving Abraham and Mitch behind me to leave a trail for us to follow back out. I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard a gunshot in the distance and my wolf became enraged again. "We need to hurry."

"Yeah, before they kill all the wolves."

"Among other reasons." We were about ten minutes into our tracking when a ringtone began to play and I stopped and turned to glare at Mitch who pulled out his phone.

"Sorry. I have to take this." I sighed heavily as I turned back to the trail and listened to the leaves whispering to each other in the breeze. "I'm turning it off now." Mitch snapped his phone shut and we continued through the woods.

"Is everything okay?" Abraham asked Mitch, adjusting his grip on the net gun.

"That was my ex." My ears perked up at the sound of ex.

"You have an ex." I spoke carefully, choosing my words wisely. "It's good to know."

"Some might assume you were incapable of deep human contact." Abraham joked.

"Yeah, my ex would be one of those." Mitch said and Abraham chuckled. "We have a daughter."

"Hmm. Wonderful. How old?"

"I thought we were supposed to be quiet."

"Well, it doesn't matter anymore. I guarantee your phone scared the wolves off." I snapped, half letting my wolf speak for me. We walked a couple more yards and I stopped when I noticed a hole hiding in the undergrowth.

"What is it?"

"A den." I bent down and gently moved some leaves around to look at the tracks in the mud. "These track are fresh which means the wolves will be back soon." I stood up and looked around for any other tracks and my eyes stopped on a small grey ball of fluff. "Abe, there's a wolf pup right between those trees."

"I got this." Abe said as he slowly began to approach the pup.

"Be careful." I whispered hastily to him. "It's mother shouldn't be too far away." Once Abe got to close to it, the pup took off running into the woods and Abraham followed after it. "Damn it." Just when I was about to follow after him, a flash of black and white ran past us and headed in the direction that Abe went. "They're going after the pup." Two low growls sounded behind us and I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, knowing the source of that growl. "Run." Without a second thought, we both took off running through the woods. My human side kept my propelling me forward but my wolf side wanted to stay behind and run with the wolves. I leapt over fallen logs and brushing overhanging branches out of my way as I tried to stay one step in front of the wolves. Mitch and I skidded to a halt in a clearing to see Abraham on the ground in the middle of it and a prisoner standing over him. He had heavy, sunken brown eyes with curly brown hair and a thick beard. His face was covered in blood and mud along with his prison blues. Wolves from all direction surrounded us and stopped like they were waiting for an order.

"And the beasts shall stand in judgement of the wicked and the boastful." The prisoner said in a gravely tone. The wolves growled and moved in closer. I looked at the each wolf and the look in their eyes terrified me. Instead of them being full of spirit and pride, they were filled with hatred and agression and seemed to be blood thirsty. My wolf yearned to get out and be with the other wolves but my human side pulled closer to Mitch, looking for someone to protect me. Gunshots sounded in the distance followed by howling. The prisoner took off in the direction of the howl and one by one the wolves followed in pursuit. I exhaled in relief and went to go help Abraham up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Are you?"

"Yeah." Branches snapped and cracked in the undergrowth and we looked to see Chloe and Jackson running towards us. "What are you doing here?"

"We're looking for you guys." Jackson explained.

"An inmate escaped from the prison." Chloe added. "We think he might be in these woods." Mitch, Abraham and I exchanged glances.

"Yeah, we saw him j-just now." Mitch stuttered.

"Which way did he go?" Jackson asked.

"No, no." Chloe protested. "It's too dangerous. I'll notify Deputy Kraft."

"What are you talking about. He's connected to this, and he couldn't have gotten far."

"Let Deputy Kraft do his job. When they capture him, I'll arrange for an interview."

"Oh, and if he says no?"

"Wait." Mitch jumped in. "While you two work this out, we still need a wolf to examine."

"We saw one a couple hundred yards back. It's just been shot."

"It's still alive?" I inquired.

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

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I finished bandaging the wolf's wound, scrunching up my face in disgust at the smell of it. I knelt down by its head and pet it gently, admiring the quality of his fur and beauty. The hotel room door opened and closed and I looked up to see Chloe coming in with a car battery in her hands.

"Is the wolf gonna be okay?" She asked.

"He'll be fine." Abraham assured her, taking the car battery from her.

"Except for this." I muttered. "When we opened the wound to remove the bullet. . ." I waved the scent of the wound towards her and she gagged at the smell. "Sometimes infected blood can have an odor."

"Yeah, but this wound is fresh." Chloe said.

"Which means he was already infected." Mitch said. "My guess is bacteria. That's the most likely culprit anyway."

"It also means that we may have found what was responsible for the wolves' agressive behavior." Jackson inputed.

"The bacteria?" She inquired.

"Possibly." Mitch said. "Want to help out? Come here." Mitch held the beaker of wolf blood to her. "That's the wolf's blood. Just keep stirring that. Don't let it thicken." Chloe took the beaker from him and obeyed.

"Okay, if you were going to draw blood from a wolf then why couldn't you have drawn it from Callana?"

"Because the human and wolf together makes it cross DNA. You wouldn't get an accurate reading and anaylsis from it." I explained. "And besides, you're the one who told us to go out into the woods and find us a wolf."

"I actually could take blood from her and compare to what we find in the wolf's blood." Mitch objected.

"And whose side are you on?"

"What does the car battery have to do with anything?" Before Mitch could answer a knock sounded on the door, followed by, "Room service." Jackson got up and answered it and came back with two coconuts in his hands.

"The French government owes me a hundred dollars." Jackson informed Chloe and handed the coconuts to Mitch.

"Excellent." Mitch said. "Those are perfect." I sat down on the bed beside the wolf and watched as Mitch set up an experiment with the coffee pot and car battery. He drained the coconut milk into the coffee pot and placed the charges from the battery into the liquid. He took the blood back from Chloe and added a few drops of the blood into the coffee pot. "Think of the coffee pot as a wolf's brain. Coconut water is chemically similar to the cerebrospinal fluid that flows through and around the brain. So if our bacteria causes a reaction in our coffee pot brain, then there's a good chance it's responsible for the wolves abnormal behavior."

"So, what are we looking for? What happens to prove that you're right?"

"Well, the current from the battery should stimulate the growth of the bacteria. We're looking for some evidence that the wolf's brain was agitated." I stood up and took a step closer to the experiment to get a better look at it. He was smarter than he let on. "For instance, if the liquid starts to bubble up a little bit."

"How long?" I asked.

"I don't know. A couple hours?" The coconut water started bubbling and we all looked at it questioningly.

"Or a couple of seconds." Abraham corrected him.

"Wow. That's. . ." The coconut water began to bubble more and more and turned pinker and pinker.

"Oh, no." Jackson breathed. Before I could ask what was going on, I was pushed to the floor by Mitch as shattered glass exploded throughout the room. Mitch reluctantly got off of me and I pushed myself to my knees and brushed the hair from my face.

"I'd say we're onto something."

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"Okay, well, aside from a destroyed hotel room, we did good work here." Chloe said as we gathered in Mitch's room.

"Little early for champagne." Mitch said. "We don't know anything about that bacteria."

"Well, we've been here for two days, and already, we've discovered unusual bacteria inside a wolf that's behaving abnormally." Abraham said. "That's an accomplishment."

"But just because it's inside the wolf doesn't mean that it's inside the lions or the cats or the bats." Jackson said.

"There is one way we can tell." Mitch said and I groaned and plopped down on his bed, already knowing his suggestion.

"How?"

"By going back to the idea he had earlier." I groaned. "Taking my blood and comparing it to the wolf's blood."

"But that will just suggest that the bacteria is in the wolf species, not any other species."

"But if the bacteria is in me, then that suggests that it's coming from somewhere else. I wasn't in Mississippi when I was contaminated nor did I get the wolf blood I was working on from Mississippi. So if there is evidence of bacteria then we can know that the animals in the New York City Region is also affected. How much do you need?"

"Not a lot." Mitch assured me. "Just a vile." I sighed.

"That's a lot." I rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants as Mitch approached me with a needle. He gingerly took my hand and gave it a small squeeze before turning it over.

"Relax. It'll hurt less." I laughed nervously as I balled my hand up in a fist and then relaxed it.

"If only that was the first time I heard those words."

"Calla." I looked deep into his eyes at the nickname that he had apparently given me. The more I stared into them, the deep, soulful brown eyes, the more I relaxed. "You're just going to feel a pinch." My breath hitched in my throat as I felt the needle press against my skin and then flinched when it entered my vein. Mitch pulled back on the needle to draw the blood. After a few seconds, I began to feel light-headed. I gripped Mitch's left forearm to stablize myself and stop myself from falling off the bed but attempted to keep my left arm still for him.

"Mitch." My voice rasped through the air.

"Just a little more. You haven't eaten anything therefore you're going to get lightheaded faster and more." I didn't even feel the needle pull out and him screw the lid onto the vile. "Jackson, can you label that Callana and Chloe, can you get her some orange juice and something sweet to eat?" I didn't even hear them respond. My head was spinning so fast like a top, I thought it was going to spin off my shoulders. "Okay, let's lay you down." Mitch gently pushed onto my shoulders to lay me down on his bed and I didn't even protest. All I knew was that as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.

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I woke up with a start to see the sun peeking through the curtains of the hotel room. I was tucked in under the comforter and my hair brushed back over my ear. I rolled over onto my right side to see the sleeping form of Mitch in the other bed. I couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face as I watched his body rise and fall under the covers. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes flickered under his eyelids as he dreamed. My eyes fell onto the nightstand to see a tall glass of orange juice with a note saying, _Drink me._ Beside it was a plate of cookies with a note saying, _Eat me._ I let out a soft laugh at the cliche thought. I pushed the covers back swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I reached for the glass of orange juice and sipped on it, the tangy taste washing over my dry tongue and relieving my aching muscles instantly. I reached for a cookie and munched on it before draining the rest of the glass of the orange juice to wash down the sweet snack. Breakfast of champions right there. I got up and put my shoes back on and went over to grab a pen from Mitch's desk. On the back of the _eat me_ note, I wrote, _Thank you, Mitch._ I propped it against the orange juice glass so he would see it when he woke up. I grabbed my jacket and walked to the door and took one more look at him before walking out of the room.


	3. Endrin

"Anything yet?" I insisted, hovering over Mitch's shoulder as he compared the blood under the microscope in an Alabama school chemistry lab.

"You know what's guaranteed to make this go faster, Calla?" He questioned me as he peered into the microscope again. "You saying anything yet every twenty-five seconds."

"Okay. I know. I know. I know. But we're running out of time."

"I know. Relax." I paced the floor behind him as I tried to let him do his work, but my impatient was getting the best of me. It felt like centuries passed when Mitch spoke up again. "Hey, now."

"What?" I stopped and pivoted on my heels to look back over his shoulder. "Wh-wh-what is it?"

"Loks like a type of _Alcanivorax_ bacteria. Kind they use to clean up oil spills, eats hydrocarbons."

"I was using that to clean up my station area that night. But how did it wind up in the blood of a wolf?"

"The usual way. It went from a primary consumer all the way to a tertiary consumer."

"Professor, remember your audience." He looked over his shoulder at me, his face inches from mine and I stopped breathing.

"I thought you studied zoology."

"Half-assly. Now please explain. We're running out of time."

"The food web. Chain reaction." He looked back into the microscope and began to sing a melody. "There was an old lady who swallowed a cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. . ."

"Mitch, as much as I enjoy your voice, we really got to get going."

"That wriggled and jiggled and tickled insider her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly." The bell rang overhead and I heard thousands of footsteps echo throughout the hallways of the school.

"Mitch, did you hear that? Let's go."

"Hang on a second. I think I got something."

"Mitch, we really got to go."

"Yup. Let's go." He closed the lid to the petri dish and grabbed the viles before shoving them into his bag along with his notes. We sneaked out the back door of the school and ran across the school yard to where Chloe and Jackson had parked the car. We climbed in as Jackson started the car. "Slipping out without getting caught by the teacher. Takes me back."

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"Yeah, once I increased the magnification, I saw a chemical signature." Mitch explained his findings. We were sitting in the local bar, sipping on beers that the French government so kindly bought for us. "A string of benign molecules that have no bearing on the bacteria whatsoever."

"Audience, Mitch." Jamie said.

"It means the bacteria was man-made. And it was signed by the chemist who created it."

"Then we need to talk to this chemist." Abraham said.

"Think of the signature as a . . . a graffiti tag. I saw it, but I still have no idea who painted it on the wall."

"So we're at a dead end." Jamie sighed.

"Not yet. Two things. One, I forwarded the signature to a guy I know at MIT. He might be able to come up with an ID for us. And two, I think I found a way to surpress Calla's wolf urges."

"How?" I inquired, intruiged by this suggestion.

"By using the bacteria to counteract and put the wolf cells in a dormant stage. It'll give the human cells a chance to evolve faster than the wolf cells and possibly destroy the wolf cells."

"So you want to use the same bacteria that made me like this to cure me?"

"Yes." I sighed and picked up my beer.

"What else do I have to lose?" I took a long swig from my beer as Chloe came up to the table.

"Pack your bags." She ordered. "We're going to Rio." Abraham laughed.

"I love this job." Abraham chuckled.

"What's in Rio?" Mitch asked.

"You said if you could find out what all of these animals we've encountered have in common, you can maybe find a way to figure out what's happening. Well, you can add bats to your list."

"Bats." Jackson laughed as he pinched the bridge of his nose and took a sip from his drink.

"Thousands of them swarming all over Rio, in broad daylight."

"That's weird, right?" Jamie inquired.

"What, the daylight thing?" Mitch clarified the question. "Bats are nocturnal, but it's not unheard of."

"Thousands of them though?" I reminded him.

"Yeah." His phone rang and he snuck away from the group to answer it while Jackson got up to talk to Chloe in private. "That was my guy at MIT. He was able to ID the signature. It was a chemist who used to work at. . . Reiden Global."

"What?" Jamie and I exclaimed at the same time.

"I'm sorry." Jamie cleared her throat. "The company that you all keep telling me isn't the root of all evil? That Reiden Global?"

"Did you get a name?" Abraham asked.

"I did." Mitch answered. "Leo Butler."

"Leo Butler?" Jackson called over to us.

"Why? You know him?"

"No. But I want to."

"Okay, Jackson, you stay here with Jamie and you find this Leo Butler." Chloe said. "The rest of us will go to Rio."

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I stood in a parking garage in Rio next to Mitch and Abraham as Chloe talked with the authority.

"We want to know what is driving the bats wild." The woman said.

"So do we." Chloe agreed.

"What business is that of the French government?"

"I'm sorry. I cannot say it."

"State secrets. Of course. In any case, it's nice to see you in the field. Congratulations."

"So the bats. Have your scientists done any testing?"

"Si. And the good news, they have determined the bats do not have rabies."

"And the bad news?"

"Rabies is the only thing that would even come close to explaining this." Mitch explained.

"Your friend is a scientist." The woman smiled.

"One who would love to know what responses are being considered."

"The plan on the table is to drop a version of Endrin on the bats."

"Are you insane?" I snapped, enraged.

"What is Endrin?" Abraham asked.

"It's an insecticide." Mitch explained with a sharp edge to his tone, obviously sharing the same feelings. "Outlawed in the States and most developed countries. It's like chemotherapy. Kills the cancer."

"But attacks everything else." I finished, glaring at the woman. "You'll be harming every single living thing down there. You won't just kill the bats, you'll be starting a genocide."

"And we are considering that very issue." The woman assured us. "But you've seen the bats. People are frightened."

"And they'll be even more frightened when the Endrin is attacking them as well."

"Well, at least give us some time, cause if you kill them all, we'll never learn what's causing this behavior." Chloe stated.

"I'll do what I can." The woman said. "But I make no promises." The agents got into their SUV and left the parking garage.

"You know, I can't help but notice, for a city under seige by bats. . . no bats." Mitch said as we walked to the edge of the parking garage and looked out of the city. "Not here at least." We looked to the left to see a portion of the city swarming with a black cloud of bats.

"Why over there and not here?" Chloe wondered out loud.

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The screeching from the bats rattled by sensitive ears as we entered the heart of the bat swarm. The buildings stood tall and clustered like something you would see in a poor town in South America or something.

"Come to Rio, jewel of South America." Mitch said as he looked in the dark night sky at the bats. On top of the bats' screeching, there was indistinct chatter and loud music playing. Abraham looked at a pole that was clustered with power surges.

"I've seen this before, this kind of jerry-rigged power, in poorer African villages." He said. "This place might as well be a separate city, cut off from all official services. Utilities, plumping, power, telephone service. To survive, the people are forced to improvise. Why do you suppose the bats congregate here, of all places?"

"Cause it's less sanitary here? More insects? More food for the bats?" Chloe's phone chimed and she pulled it out to answer it. "I don't know. I got to get a hold of one of these things, study it up close."

"Gabriela was able to delay the pesticide drop until morning." Chloe informed us.

"Wow, that give plenty of more time." I sneered, still sour about the pesticide idea. Gunshot fired from down the street and out of instinct we ducked to the ground as Chloe pulled out her gun.

"It's okay." Abraham reassured us. "They're shooting at the bats." He turned to look past Mitch. "Mitch." Mitch turned to see a little tunnel with bats hanging upside on the ceiling sleeping. "After you." Mitch glared at him before pulling out a plastic tub and a set of tongs. He slowly walked up to one and went to go grab the legs of one with the tongs but instead missed and scared the whole flock of them. They scattered and landed on the power surges and began chewing on them.

"What are they doing?" Chloe asked.

"Sometimes insects like to nest in transformers." Mitch said. "Maybe the bats are feeding." A worried look washed over Abraham's face and he backed up from the pole.

"What?"

"Get down!" Abraham yelled the warning to us and before anything had happened, Mitch's body was once again covering mine as an explosion sounded behind us and sparks flew. We slowly stood up as people screamed and the power went out as one by one each power surge on the street exploded. "Must have been a chain reaction." A truck with bright headlights came pulling up the street and stopping in front of us. Two men from the bed of the truck jumped out and two more men from the cab got out and walked over to us. The main guy started speaking Portuguese to us and we looked at each other confusion.

"What did you do?" The guy spoke in English.

"Nothing." Chloe assured him. "We're only studying the bats."

"You're French?"

"Yes."

"My friend, we don't want any trouble." Abraham said.

"And where are you from, big papa?" The man asked mockingly.

"Africa."

"Gonna wish you never left." Abraham chuckled.

"You might want to reconsider." The man took a step towards Abraham and Chloe pulled out her gun and shouted Portuguese at him. Mitch's face scrunched up in fear, not wanting to be in the middle of something. The men surrounding the guy pulled out their guns and pointed them at us.

"Shall we lower our weapons and have a discussion?" I offered, stepping forward.

"Americans, an African and a French woman." A new man walked up to the front of the group. He was bald with a dark gotee. He chuckled as he looked at each one of us. "If you'd walk into a bar together, it would be the start of a bad joke."

"Sorry, already beat you to that." The man glared at me.

"Calla, please." Mitch whispered beside me, his tone clouded with worry.

"Rio has many sights popular the tourists, but. . . this neighborhood is not one of them." The man stated.

"Tell your man to stand down." Chloe ordered. "We're no threat to them."

"The fact that your gun is still raised says otherwise."

"Chloe, put your gun away." I said, my eyes never leaving the man's face.

"Perhaps we should pay these men for their time." Abraham offered. "A token of our inconveniencing them." Abraham pulled our his wallet and handed the man a wad of cash. The man smiled and took the money from him. Chloe lowered her gun as the man turned around and walked away. Mitch looked behind him and picked up a dead bat that must have got electrocuted by the power surge. He picked it up with the tongs and put it into the plastic container.

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"What are you looking for exactly?" Abraham asked as we sat around Mitch's room watching him examine the bat.

"Anything abnormal." Mitch answered. "Some sort of clue as to why they're behaving this way. Could take a while."

"That's why I never had any patience for science. I'm going to walk to that pasteis. Does anyone want something?"

"I'll come with you." Chloe offered. The two of them got up and walked out of the room leaving Mitch and I alone with the bat. We sat in silence for a couple minutes until Mitch finally spoke up.

"So have you ever become, you know, the wolf?" Mitch asked me. I stared at the back of his head as he bent over the bat, shocked by the question.

"Um, it depends how far I let it get a hold of me, but yes, I have and I don't do pretty things when I'm like that." I answered. "It's the same behavior that the wolves did at the prison in Mississippi. Now a question for you, how come everytime something goes wrong, it's always you who jumps to protect me?" Mitch lowered his magnify glass and looked over his shoulder at me.

"Because I'm incapable of leaving you unprotected."

"Interesting answer." I muttered as I got up and walked over to the window as my face turned a beet red.

"Hang on a second." I pivoted on my heel to see Mitch leaning back over the bat. "The eyes have changed. Shape is different. Here, come here. Take a look. Pupils are bigger." As I approached the bat, it let out a loud screech and fluttered its wings. I gasped and jumped back, my heart in my throat as Mitch pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up. "That's not dead. That's not a dead bat."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious."

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I sat on the bed with my back pressed against the headboard of the bed and Mitch sat on the edge of the bed. His firm hand was wrapped around my arm as he stuck the needle into my forearm to draw more blood. It didn't hurt as much this time but I still flinched at the injection. I watched as the thick blood filled the vile and when it became full, Mitch pulled it out and screw the lid on it. He got up and labeled the vile before disinfecting the needle and coming back over to me and putting a band-aid on my arm.

"How do you feel?" He asked me.

"I'm fine." I lied. The truth was, my head was spinning faster than the first time and my stomach tossed and turned like I was going to vomit. He continued to stare at me like he was trying to figure out whether I was lying or not. He decided to let it go. But instead of getting up and walking away, he leaned in. I didn't even have time to react when his lips pressed against mine. At first, the kiss was small. But then, it grew bigger and more intense. It was probably the most intense kiss that I have ever experienced and I wanted more. If I wasn't lightheaded before I definetly was lightheaded now. Our kiss broke and he stared into my eyes, both of us heaving for breath. Our lips locked again, deeper this time as warm fingers caressed my face. He tasted tentatively with his tongue as he traced it across the bottom of my lip. Soon, we started swallowing each other, making the kiss even more intense. My wolf let out a growl, but not a threatening growl but a growl of contentment. I let out a moan as Mitch's hot breath traveled down to my neck. His fingers prickled my skin with his touch. I moaned out his name as he continued to gently pull at the skin on my neck with his lips. My fingers were tangled in his hair. I was trying to keep my grip under control, being careful not to pull. His lips returned to mine and I moaned against his mouth wanting more, needing more. His fingers threaded themselves into my white blonde hair as he pulled me tighter against him. Before I could get anymore, there was a knock on the door. He pulled away from me in shock and cleared his throat. My chest rose and fell as I tried to catch my breath and pull my heart from my throat. He stared at me for another second while he tried to catch his breath. The knock came again followed by Chloe's voice.

"Mitch?" Mitch finally got up and went to the door but not before giving me another kiss. My face turned beet red as I smoothed out my hair and Mitch went to go open the door for Chloe and Abraham. "A bat attacked my phone. I was on the phone with Jackson and out of nowhere a bat just attacks my phone. "Is it possible that the bat was attracted to my phone or to technology? I mean, is that crazy?"

"Well, crazy seems to be on a sliding scale since I met you guys." Mitch muttered as he took his spot on the edge of the bed beside me.

"The plane in Japan. Perhaps the bats were attracted to its radio waves. And what about the solar panels in the Antarctic?"

"And those power poles in the favelas weren't shielded properly."

"I think you are using the wrong words." I said, leaning forward and took the Indian style position. "Being attracted to something is not the same thing as attacking it."

"Well, I don't know. I once threw all my ex-wife's clothes on the front lawn cause I was attracted to her. All right, are you guys familiar with the- the trophic scale?" Abraham and Chloe stared at Mitch blankly.

"I'll give you guys a hint. The trophic scale is an index of where everything falls on the food chain."

"Apex predators are a five. They're at the top. Sharks, birds of prey."

"Tigers. Lions."

"Predators that eat other predators. Humans, contrary to popular belief, are only a 2.2. Alongside pigs and. . . anchovies."

"Anchovies?" Abraham chuckled.

"Now, only two things allow us to behave like fives. Our ability to reason. . . and our technology."

"But they can't know it." Chloe said. "The animals, the bats."

"Can't know what?"

"That's it's only our technology that keeps us from being their prey."

"Are you asking the animals have somehow developed a. . . hyperintelligence?"

"Whether they know it or not, this mission of ours has just become a whole lot less amusing." Abraham said crossing his meaty arms across his broad chest.

"How far can bats see?" Chloe inquired.

"Depends." I answered as I placed my head in my hands to stop it from spinning. I didn't know whether it was from the lack of blood in my body right now or from being so close to Mitch right now and the intense kiss I just experienced. Or both. "Some can only see up to twenty five feet, others can see up to a few hundred yards. Why?"

"We go far out into the forest and we hook up something with an electro magnetic signal and we boost it somehow so the bats can't miss it."

"Once there, they'll be too far away to see any other electromagnetic source." Abraham finished getting excited about the idea."

"Exactamont. So maybe they remain there."

"All right, whoa." Mitch said. "Whoa. Let's try and remember our designations here, okay? I'm the scientist. You're the analyst. You're the feline expert. Still not sure what you are." I rolled my eyes behind his back.

"But it could work, yes?" Abraham questioned him.

"No."

"Yes." I objected, peering over Mitch's shoulder at Abraham and Chloe.

"Maybe. If we. . . if we had something that gave off that kind of signal."

"How about a cellular antenna?" Chloe suggested. "Like the one at the favela?"

"The favelas. . . yeah, uh, you don't remember what happened to us out there?"

"Real cellular antennae- those owned by phone companies- will be secured behind locked gates."

"No. No way."

"Do you have another idea?" I asked and he turned his body slightly towards me.

"You support this plan?" I just continued to stare at him, the kiss still lingering on my lips and that was the only thing I could think about right now.

"I mean, guys, we have to do something." Chloe said. "If we don't, the government will drop poison from the sky and as you two pointed out, that poison will affect every living thing in Rio. Including us."

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I stood below the balcony that Mitch had climbed up on to get the antenna. I looked nervously around for any trouble, second guessing this whole plan. Chloe and Abraham were off stealing the truck while Mitch and I attempted to get the antenna.

"Think I almost got it." Mitch called down to us. I looked back up to him and my wolf whined, yearning for another kiss and worrying about his safety. I think my wolf just found a mate. I let out a growl in frustration.

"Almost got what?" A man to our left asked and we looked to see the group of men from earlier walking to us. "I can't even begin to understand what's happening right now." I held up my hands to show him that I wasn't going to attempt anything.

"You're making a mistake." I said.

"Only mistake was keeping Enzo on his leash earlier."

"Hidey ho." Enzo smirked at us from behind the man.

"Hey." Mitch said as he jumped from the balcony to the van and onto the ground and took his place beside me. "We're. . . we're actually just trying to solve your bat problem."

"Oh, yeah?" The man questioned him. "Aliado, it looks to me like you've got a bat problem all your own." Enzo raced forward and slammed a metal baseball bat into Mitch's stomach.

"Hey!" I barked at him and took a step towards him but stopped when I heard a gun cock. My wolf was growling furiously and I was attempting to keep her undercontrol. This wasn't going to end well.


	4. Chapter 4

"Please, I can explain." I insisted as I was shoved around through dark hallways by the group of men with Silva in the lead. I turned around to the man behind him and growled at him. "Touch me again and I swear to God, I'll start swinging." Mitch was following along right behind the man behind me.

"You were trying to bug my cell antenna, the explanation is obvious." Silva said as he opened a door that lead to a set of stairs. We climbed them to about the fifth floor.

"We have no interest in your business. We needed your antenna to get rid of the bats."

"She's telling you the truth." Mitch said.

"Says the American from the DEA." Silva sneered.

"I'm a veterinary pathologist. You don't believe me? Well, I got the Presidential Award from the ACVP, a swell group of geniuses. You want to hear me talk about experimental mycoplasmosis in alligators? How about gallbladder adenocarcinoma in African lions? I'm not a DEA agent. Only thing I know about the drug war is that. . . drugs won. So good for you." A man grabbed me by the arm and pulled my left arm back all the way and swung, my fist connecting with the man's nose with all my body weight behind it. He doubled over and gripped his now bleeding nose. I held up my hands in surrender as all the guns cocked and pointed to me. "You just had to go and start something?"

"For all I know, it was you who started something back in the hotel room." I snapped, keeping my eyes on the man I punched. "And besides, I did warn him." The man stood up and it was too dark to react to his flying fist in time. It connected with my left cheekbone and I stumbled back and hit my head against the stair railing. I couldn't tell what hurt more. My cheek. . . my head. . . or my pride. I felt blood trickling down from my forehead as it throbbed. My nails dug into the concrete as my wolf was howling and begging to be let out. But if I allowed her to shift now, I would be shot on the spot, no questions asked so I pushed her aside and she snapped in protest. I laughed as I wiped the blood from my lips. "You hit like a girl." The man made another move towards me but Silva yelled in Portuguese. The men grabbed both Mitch and me and pushed us into an empty apartment.

"If you are who you say you are, explain this to me." Silva pointed to the mice roaming freely across the countertops and the windowsills. "So until yesterday, the mice would run when people came in through the door."

"Well, that, Mr. Silva, is a clear sign that things are working their way down the food chain." Mitch explained.

"Is that the best that you can do, Mr. Veterinary Pathologist?"

"The bats have developed some kind of biological imperative to attack technology. That's why they were going after the transformers. But they still have to eat, and what they eat is street mice. So these little guys, they probably think they're better off with us than with the bats." I walked over to the window and peered out over the city where the bats were swarming. An airplane was flying over them spraying a thick black grey smoke on them. Endrin. Instead of flying away, the bats flew faster and screeched louder.

"Mitch." I called to him. "The Endrin's not working. It's just getting worse. Please, Mr. Silva, let us go. Please, we need to speak to the authorities."

"So you can help the rich people downtown?" Silva sneered. "In Complexo do Alemao, I am the authority. I collect the garbage, provide the power, cell service. If there's a problem, I take care of it."

"Well, that's great." Mitch said sarcastically. "But we're trying to help you with this problem. Getting rid of the bats is what we were attempting to do before you kidnapped us."

"We may be able to draw them away if we can take your antenna." I said.

"I lose cell service, it costs me 200,000 reais a day. Are you gonna make that up to me?" Silva asked.

"Well, do you want us to do something or not?" Mitch inquired.

"The antenna is not an acceptable option." Silva spoke Portuguese to me and it was little Portuguese that I wish I didn't know. He turned and left the room with his men behind him and locked the door.

"What did he say?"

"If we don't find an answer, he'll kill us." I said.

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I sat on the floor of the apartment and leaned against the wall. I looked up at the window above me and stared at the full moon that was looking back at me. I was in so much pain.

"Hey," I looked back down and in front of me to see Mitch kneeling down in front of me. "How's your head?" I didn't even answer. He reached out and gingerly placed his fingers on my chin to turn my head to look at the wound. "You hit it pretty hard. You could have a concussion."

"I'm fine." I lied which came out in a whisper. Why was it that everytime he got near me, I forget how to speak? I forget how to breath? I forget how to think? His eyes dropped from my forehead to my eyes and I stared back. "So that kiss?"

"What about it?" His fingers dropped from my chin and I whined in protest.

"Why did you do it?" He dropped his head and looked down at his feet before looking back at me.

"Because I've wanted to taste those lips since you walked into that conference room in Japan." His answer had my heart racing through my chest and my wolf wagging her tail a hundred miles a minute.

"Well, can you taste them again?" He didn't even hesitate. His lips were immediately on mine, bruising mine with great force. My hands were in his hair, pulling him closer to me. I ignored the pain spreading in my cheek because the sensational feelings I was getting from this kiss counteracted it. My wolf growled possessively and Mitch pulled back and looked at me questioningly. "It's okay. She likes you. Which is a first considering that she wants to tear open everyone she comes in contact with. When that guy hit me, it took every ounce of my strength to keep her back." He cupped my cheek in his hand and I tried not to flinch.

"I'm going to fix you."

"Even if it means taking all of the blood out of my body?" He let out a soft chuckle that I had come to love.

"I'll try to let you recoporate before taking anymore." I smiled and pressed my face further into his hand, closing my eyes and inhaling his scent. My eyes snapped open as I heard footsteps in the hallway. "What?"

"Silva's coming back." Mitch helped me to my feet and we faced the door just as Silva opened it.

"Well, you have a solution for me?" Silva asked.

"Look, we can't do anything about the bats." Mitch informed him.

"Because we don't have any supplies." I said hastily. "But if we did, we could build an electromagnectic pulse.""

"What kind of supplies?" Silva inquired. I looked to Mitch and he closed his eyes, sighing.

"Um. . . an old PC, some copper wire, um, a speaker, and a-a steel rod or pole, about six, seven feet, maybe." Mitch ranted off the list. "And a couple of batteries. Big ones. Like out of a car. And. . . and a soldering iron." Silva just continued to stare at us.

"Do you want us to fix this or not?" I snapped.

"Flavio will get you your supplies." Silva finally said. "And then he will watch you."

"Good." Mitch said sarcastically. "Maybe he'll learn something." Silva glared at him before looking to me.

"You should keep him on a tighter leash, your _veterinario."_ He turned and walked out of the room, locking the door behind him again.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

"We stay alive long enough for Abraham and Chloe to find us." I explained.

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Dance music played loudly throughout the apartment as Flavio played on his phone while Mitch tried building the electromagnetic pulse.

"Silva is not gonna wait much longer." I said hastily.

"I'm doing the best I can, Calla." Mitch informed me. "But this music is driving me nuts. Two weeks ago, my idea of danger was. . . rush hour on the 405. And here I am building a twenty dollar machine that's not going to do a damn thing."

"That twenty dollar maching is the reason why you're not dead already. We stay alive until Abraham and Chloe can find us."

"That's a great idea until Silva pushes the button on this contraption and expects bats to come." Mitch became silent as he stared long and hard at the machine.

"What?"

"I've been looking at this backwards. Instead of a carrot, we need a stick."

"A stick?"

"Instead of luring them away, we need to- we need to chase them out. Back in vet school, I had a. . . very hot professor who had a thing for bats." My wolf growled possessively and bared her teeth and Mitch looked at me worriedly. "Details not important. Or appropriate." Her growl got louder.

"Get on with the story, Mitch, before I'm forced to give in to the wolf."

"Anyway, I spent a very memorable night listening to her theories, one of which was high-pitched frequencies repel bats. If this thing has a joystick control board instead of an EMP, I can- I can- I can build an oscillator. That's a- It's a device that puts out a continual sound frequency."

"I know what an oscillator is. I'm not Chloe or Jamie." He rumaged through the pile of parts and pulled something out.

"Well. . . there it is."

"Uma hora." Flavio said to us.

"One hour, Mitch." I translated and Mitch went back to work.

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"If your machine doesn't work, he's gonna kill us." I muttered.

"Full disclosure." Mitch said. "I'm not exactly hopeful that my awesome occillator's gonna do anything but fizzle."

"Why do you do that?"

"Because it's the truth." He looked at me with his soft puppy dog brown eyes.

"It's not the truth. It's what you choose to believe because it's easier than having hope. You hide behind logic. You think emotions are for the weak. But it's all a defense." Mitch opened his mouth to say something but I stopped him. "Please don't pretend that it's not."

"You know, a long time ago, there was a point in time, I was. . . I was kind of a big deal. But ego is like having a hot girlfriend. Lot of maintenance. I published a study that wasn't fully cooked yet, and I got my ass kicked. So the truth is, I've been dead for three years. Today's just gonna make it official." He looked down at the table and played with a piece of wire.

"You're not talking about your job. You're talking about your daughter." His head snapped back up and he looked at me. "Chloe left our files out on her desk one day and I took the oppurtunity to read them. Her name is Clementine. She's ten years old. She was diagnosed three years ago. I want to feel bad for you but men who hide things. . . they become ugly."

"Well, you're good, aren't you?" He was quiet for a mintue as he pondered my words and decided what to say next. "Wasn't that bad at first. She just. . . She got a little clumsy. But then. . . she started having seizures." It broke my heart as I watched his eyes become watery as he struggled to keep it together. "A lot of kids with her syndrome, th-they- they lose their eyesight, and get- get different personalities, but not Clem. Clem's just dying."

"Why aren't you with her?"

"Cause baby mama married a. . . decent guy when she was two, and I just decided to let them have their family. Until she got sick. . . and I started beating down the doors of every research hospital in the country. Then her mom put a stop to that. Cause it was, you know, too many doctors, too many tests. And all I was doing was- was robbing Clem of whatever life she was gonna have left. I'm pretty much out of the picture now."

"She's been through so much. Maybe she needs you."

"And maybe I've waited too long to reach out. Now that she's so sick, I don't- I don't want her to think that. . . I'm just doing it out of pity, you know? Out of pity. So. . . that's me. Secret dad." He sniffled as a tear slipped down his face and I reached out and took his hand in mine and brought it to my lips.

"Nothing weighs more than a secret. I think you should talk to her." The corner of Mitch's mouth lifted up in a smile as Flavio's phone rang and he answered it. He talked in Portuguese for a second before hanging up. He waved for us to get up. "It must have worked."

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Falvio had let us go and we were wondering the streets looking for Abraham and Chloe. I began to open my mouth to say something but a high pitched sounded and tore at my eardrums. I covered my ears and dropped to my knees, crying out in pain as the high pitch noise got louder.

"Calla!" Mitch was at my side in a second. Dogs all around were barking and howling along with the wolf inside me. There was no use in holding her back this time. My human side was too busy trying to stop the noise from entering my ears than to care about the wolf. I looked up at Mitch and saw my pupils dilating in his glasses.

"You need to go." I breathed with a growl. I screamed in agony as my bones shifted in ways they weren't supposed to and my muscles stretched to accomodate my new growing body. My hands shrieked to the size of paws and black and grey white fur replaced the hair on my body. I raised my head to look at my reflection in Mitch's glasses and saw the face of a wolf. I snorted and turned and raced down the streets away from the high pitched frequency. My paws pounded against the hard pavement leaving society behind me. I snapped my jaws at every living thing near me as I passed them. Rage boiled inside me. I'd never felt so angry. I was angry about everything and anything known to man. Man. I wanted them gone. I wanted them to be wiped from the face of this earth. I stopped and raised my head to let out a howl of vengenance.

"Calla!" That voice. That same voice that pulled me back when I was about to shift in the woods in Mississippi. It wasn't me who pulled the wolf back this time. The wolf pulled herself back. And there I was laying naked on the edge of the Rio forest. I scrambled to my feet and hid behind a tree before anyone could see me. Hopefully, my howl gave my position for the others to find me. I sat behind the tree for what seem like hours, I heard my name in the distance.

"Callana!" Abraham and Chloe's voice sounded and I waited for one more voice before calling back to them.

"Calla!" I leaned against the tree and sighed, savoring the sound of his voice.

"Over here!" I called to them. "Be warned, I am naked."

"Naked?" Chloe inquired.

"Well, a wolf can't exactly fit in human clothes."

"Ok, I'm going to bring you Mitch's jacket." I held out my hand and Chloe handed me the jacket. I wrapped it around my shoulder and buttoned it up and made sure it was covering everything before stepping out from behind the tree.

"She didn't like the oscillator. The wolf. She did not like it at all. Let's get out of here and meet up with Jackson and Jamie." I walked slowly beside Mitch, stepping carefully around pebbles, my tender feet sore from the hard ground. I bumped into Mitch and smiled up at him. "It worked."

"I knew it would." He smiled back down at me and I looked back down at my feet blushing.

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We sat in the lobby of the airport in Washington DC, drinking a beer as we waited for Jackson and Jamie to meet up with us. I seethed in disgust as I stared at the bruise and cuts on my face in the reflection of my phone.

"It doesn't look that bad." Mitch assured me and I stared at him in shock.

"Doesn't look that bad?" I exclaimed. "Mitch, my forehead looks like I got bit by a giant ass spider and my mouth and cheek looks like the Joker got me." He smiled that crooked smile of his.

"And you still look beautiful." I opened my mouth to say something but closed and looked back down at my phone, blushing. "So. . . what's next? I'm feeling kind of cocky after beating a bat plague with twenty dollars worth of used hardware. Bring it." Jackson and Jamie walked up to us and I stared in surprise at Jamie's face. Her face was covered in scratchs and cuts.

"Rafiki." Abraham breathed the African word for friend as he stood up to greet Jamie and Jackson. Jackson looked almost as bad as Jamie. His face had bruises and cuts as well. "Who did this to you?"

"It's, uh, it's a very long story, huh?" Jackson sighed. "I'll tell you later." Jamie sat down beside me and gasped.

"Callana, what happened to your face?"

"Wow, Jamie, I could say the same thing about you." I growled.

"I got in a car accident."

"And I decided to get smart with a Rio gang." Jamie pulled something out of her bag and saw that it was a gray cylinder with a golden rock in the middle of it.

"What is it?" Chloe asked.

"They call it the mother cell." Jamie explained.

"What the hell is a mother cell?" Mitch asked. We looked at each other for an answer but none of us could come up with an answer.


	5. Chapter 5

Abraham, Jamie, Mitch and I were in a research facility in Paris examining a bear who went into hibernation in the middle of the summer.

"So how do we tell if he's been infected by the mother cell?" Abraham asked Mitch.

"Grab me that tray of test tubes over there, will you?" Mitch asked Jamie and she nodded and went to go grab the tray as Mitch knelt down beside the bear and took a blood sample. "I'm going to take a blood panel and hope that some foreign elements show up. If they do, I'll compare their chemical structure with the mother cell. And if they match, we've got our answer."

"So, basically, you're looking for a. . . fingerprint." Jamie said. "Chemically speaking."

"Look at you. Getting all sciencey." He stood up and handed me the blood samples. "Ten drops each, in each of those test tubes." I did as I was instructed. "And as a backup, we'll take a DNA sample. Takes a little longer, but might as well while we're here, right? Would you mind taking a swab from our friend's mouth, there?"

"Sure." Abraham said as he took the q-tip from Mitch and slowly approached the bear's head. The beeping on the monitor began to speed up. "He's waking up."

"Oh, that's okay."

"Says you."

"No, really. It's- even in hibernation, a bear's heart rate increases when a- when a predator approaches. It's nature's little warning signal. Apparently, you're quite predatory."

"Okay." Abraham slowly bent down and wiped the q-tip on the side of the bear's mouth before handing it back to Mitch. After putting it in a baggie, Mitch walked to the head of the bear and opened a eyelide and looked into the eye.

"Huh."

"Huh, what?" I asked.

"His eye is normal. Come take a look." I walked over to him and knelt down beside him and looked into the bear's eye to see a golden color with a normal sized pupil looking back at me. "No defiant pupil."

"But that doesn't make any sense. If he was exposed to the mother cell, his pupil should be-"

"All big and scary. Yeah. It should be."

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"So I- No defiant pupil?" Jackson questioned Mitch as we stood in the kitchen of Chloe's beautiful home. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know yet." Mitch said. "But it doesn't necessarily mean that the bear wasn't affected by the mother cell. Blood labs should be back in a couple of hours."

"Okay. But why else would a bear be hibernating in the middle of summer?"

"There are two types of hibernation, okay? One is what we normally think of, Yogi Bear goes into a deep suspended animation to survive a winter of scarce resources. The other is when an animal falls temporarily dormant, so that resources can be biologically redirected."

"What does that mean, redirected?" I inquired.

"Like, a. . . caterpillar turning into a butterfly or. . . when little kids sleep so deeply when they're growing."

"So. . . you mean you think that the bear's changing?" Jackson asked.

"I think it's possible. The question is. . . into what? Calla, I have your blood sample ready for testing. It's up in my room. If you're still willing to try it, that is." I took a sip of my wine and nodded.

"Of course." I said and followed Mitch out of the kitchen and up the spiral steps to the bedroom at the end of the hallway. He opened the door for me and I walked past him into the room. The room overlook the city and had a direct view of the Effiel Tower. It was bright with a lot of lighting that flickered off the wooden walls. A california king bed was in the middle of the room with two nightstands on either side of it. Mitch closed the door behind him and I turned to face him and in a flash, his lips were on mine. I let out an involuntary moan as I deepened the kiss. We swallowed each other for a moment before he pulled away, leaving me wanting more.

"God, I want you, Calla." I smiled up at him.

"We are in the city of love." After putting his glasses on one of the nightstands, Mitch gazed at me as he slowly slipped my shirt from my body, letting it drop to the floor. He ran his hands down the length of my arms, his fingers entwining with mine. Then he crossed our hands behind me as he kissed me long and deep, pressed so tightly against me, I almost couldn't breath. As soon as he released my hands, they found their way to their new home, tangled in his hair as he pushed me down on the bed, falling on top of me but keeping his weight on his elbows. He feathered kisses down my neck to my collarbone and my breath caught in my throat. Mitch smiled against my skin. I felt his hands as they unclasped my bra, adding it to the pile on the floor. He left a trail of kisses across the tops of my breasts, his hands traveling up to cup them gently. His thumbs grazed my nipples and I almost came out of my skin. "That feels amazing." I sighed, watching him attend to me. I dropped my head back to enjoy. His tongue flickered across my right nipple and his mouth zeroed in, taking me between his lips. His teeth softly encircled me, biting gently. I cried out, letting him know that this was exactly what I needed. His teeth nibbled more insistently and his left hand began to move towards my legs. I ran my hands up and down his back, beginning to feel the slow build that was building up inside me. He stood up to take off his shirt and I sat up to watch him. I glad I was sitting down because when he took off his shirt, I felt my knees began to shake. He was so beautiful. My gaze traveled up and down his body. He was long and lean, strong and handsome. He had a bare broad chest that would have brought my to my knees if I was standing up. He noticed me staring and he grinned.

"What are you staring at?"

"You. You're beautiful." I ran my fingertips lightly across his chest, lower onto his stomach and he groaned.

"You're the beautiful one in this room." I suddenly felt shy about my body and crossed my arms over my chest but he caught them, hold them out to the sides so he could continue to let his eyes roam across my skin. "Beautiful." His hands returned to my body. I returned mine to his. As my fingertips slipped into the waistband of his jeans, he raised an eyebrow. His lips returned to mine and he slowly began to push me back onto the bed and I knew I only had seconds before I was going to be powerless and I wanted him more naked than he was now. I expertly snapped open his button and unzipped him before he knew what I was doing. As his eyes widened, I slipped one hand inside and found what I was looking for and gave him a gently but insistent squeeze. "Calla." I slipped his jeans down his legs. He gave in, kicking off his shoes and allowing me to continue to slide them off. I knelt in front of him before he could stop me and as I finished removing them, I chanced a quick look up. He was staring down at me with such a look of lust and want, it almost made me rock back on my heels. His dark grey boxer briefs were molded to his body as if they were made to be there. I could see his excitment underneath and my fingertips gently teased, fluttering and massaging him through the fabric. His hands wound in my hair and I pressed my face against him, feathering kisses on him and running my nails up the insides of his thighs. "Calla, if you're trying to distract me, it won't work." Was that a challenge? I looked up at him, running my hands up along his bottom, grasping the back of his boxer firmly.

"You sure about that?" Before he had a chance to answer, I pulled his boxers completely down, grasped him in my hand and took him fully into my mouth.

"Oh, God, Calla. . . Jesus." His hands tightened in my hair as he moaned. Hearing that gorgeous voice moan my name made me weak and put my wolf in a submissive state. She knew who the alpha was. I let him fill me, feeling the hardness of him at the back of my throat and I inwardly smiled. This was exactly where I wanted him. He was perfect and huge and smooth and rock hard. I pulled back slightly, placing both hands on his length and decided to mess with him a little. As I admired his perfection, I looked up at him.

"Would you call this a distraction?" I let my tongue lick him from the base to the tip, playing with it as he watched me. He moaned quietly, tracing his fingers lovingly around my face. I was so surprised when I suddenly landed on the bed with such force that pillows were thrown all over the room. Mitch had picked me up, thrown me on the bed and was now attacking me vigorously. My pants were unceremoniously yanked down and tossed aside. All that was left between us was a tiny pair of blue lace underwear. He tore my underwear from my body, leaving me naked and in shock. Mitch looked at me with crazed eyes, stopping where my legs met and licking his lips.

"So beautiful." He pulled my hips toward the edge of the bed, sinking down so that his face was level with them. Then he bent his head to me and began to give me the most earth shattering series of orgasms I had ever experience in my entire life. When his tongue touched me, I arched off the bed so violently that he had to hold me down. "You aren't going anywhere." The feeling of his hot breath against me almost made me come again instantly. His hands gripped my hips, angling so that I was completely vulnerable to whatever he wished to do to me. I shivered in anticipation. He eventually climbed back on top of me and turned my head to the side, slowly kissing my neck. I let out a long, lustful moan as my body shuddered in pleasure. He grinded into me, lips meeting mine. It was followed by his exquisite tongue. I ran my hands through his hair. He slid into me with one single thrust. My breath hitched in my throat as I gripped tight to Mitch's hair. I met each one of his thrusts, my hands roaming over every inch of his chest.

"Faster, please." He gladly followed and I began to climax. He moved from my lips to my neck and kissed it and that sent me over the edge. I gripped his upper arms and had to stop myself from screaming his name as the best feeling I had ever felt escaped my body. He followed after me and the way he moaned my name when he did made my eyes roll in pleasure. It brought me to the edge again. I arched my back, curled my toes and bucked wildly as pleasure rocked through me again and again. He collapsed beside me and kissed my neck as we both tried to catch our breath. "So. . . what happened to that blood sample?" I felt him smile against my neck.

"I had to make sure that you were relaxed. Couldn't give you a shot with you being all tense." I laughed.

"I don't think I can become any more relaxed than what I am right now." He chuckled before getting up and sliding on his jeans again. He picked the pillows up from the floor and stacked them back on the bed before helping me up to the top of the bed. I moaned softly as I buried my face into one of the pillows and stretched out across the bed. He kissed each of my shoulder blades before I felt a sharp pinch on my left forearm. "Ow."

"Sorry, Calla." I closed my eyes as he climbed on the bed behind me and pulled me into his chest, covering us up with the comforter.

"How long till it takes effect?"

"I'm not sure. Should see a change within the next twenty-four hours."

"Good or bad?" He leaned down and kissed me behind the ear.

"Go to sleep, Calla." I drifted off to an easy slumber after my body let out one more shudder of pleasure.

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I woke up a few hours later and stretched my sore muscles. I let out a yawn and turned over hoping to see Mitch's face but instead saw an empty space. A frown spread across my face. He must be downstairs. I slowly got out of bed, stretching each one of my ginger muscles as I got dressed. I left my shoes alone and just decided to go barefoot. I left the room, closing the door behind and walking down the well lit wooden hallway. I stopped by a mirror that was hanging in the hallway and quickly assembled my hair, pulling tangles out with my fingers. When I was satisfied with my hair, I bounced down the stairs and headed to the dining room where I heard everyone talking to each other. My wolf's ears perked up when she heard Mitch's voice.

"Right, because why would that be a problem?" I heard him say.

"Why what would be a problem?" I asked, walking into the dining room.

"Abe had an idea, a good one." Jackson said as I went to go sit down next to Mitch,

"About the bears?"

"No, about Jamie." Chloe clarified. "She can't spend the rest of her life running. We have to get her out of it by proving that Ben Shafer was on Reiden's payroll." I looked to Mitch for a better explanation but he just shrugged his shoulders and handed me a glass of wine. I shook my head and denied it. "Reiden has an office here in Paris. We're breaking in."

"So the Paris Reiden office only handles European contracts, but their computer network in linked to the central system back in Boston, which means, if we can hack into their system, we can prove that Ben Shafer was on their payroll."

"And how are we gonna do that?" I inquired.

"What, the hacking into the system part or the proving it part?" Mitch asked.

"Both."

"Here. It makes more sense if you drink this." I finally took the wine from Mitch and sipped on it.

"Okay. Uh, second part first." Jackson said.

"Uh, I've done investigations like this for stories." Jamie said. "Corporations keep track of every penny of their finances, so if theres's a payoff to Ben Shafer, it'll be in their accounting records. We just access the finances and follow the paper trail."

"Presuming that he used his real name." Chloe added.

"Uh, agreed. It's not necessarily going to be easy, but there's always something. Uh, money that moves from one account to another. Numbers that don't add up."

"A pattern."

"That's your speciality, right?" Abraham questioned her. "Recognizing patterns." Everyone picked up their dinner plates and took them to the kitchen where Mitch began to wash them. I got up and followed them, sipping on my wine.

"Okay, you say once we access their finances." I said. "How are we gonna do that?"

"That's the cool part." Jackson said. "See, as far as we can tell, all top-level Reiden executives have access to their entire computer network. But the system doesn't use passwords. It uses facial recognition. So we just need to locate an executive with access and then trick their system into thinking they're signing into their account."

"And that's where Chloe comes in." Abraham said. "This is going to be a team effort. Including Mitch." Mitch turned from the sink and glared at the back of Abraham's head. "We are assuming there are a thousand of documents to comb through, so we're going to copy the records onto a computer with enough storage space. The one in the animal lab."

"And what's my role?" I asked.

"You get to have some fun." I smiled at the thought.

"Don't get too excited." Jackson said. "By fun, he means staying here and holding down the fort."

"What?" I exclaimed. "I thought you said this was a team effort. Hell, even Mitch has something to do and he's just a veternarian. No offense, Mitch."

"None taken, Calla." Mitch said and for a second it calmed me until Jackson spoke.

"Calla," Jackson said and I looked away from Mitch and glared at him.

"Callana," I snapped, anger was surging through me and by using the nickname that I only liked Mitch using was going to send me over the edge.

"Callana, we can't risk jeopardizing the mission. Not with your condition."

"She can be controlled."

"We can't risk it." A growl burrowed itself into my chest. "My point exactly." Before I could shift and lunge at him, Mitch was at my side, hands on my shoulder and my wolf sat back. I turned on my heel and stormed out of the kitchen.

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I leaned on my elbows against the balcony in Mitch's room. I stared at Eiffel Tower, admiring the beauty of the lights coming off it. This aggression had to be from the shot. Why else would I get so angry over the littlest thing?

"Hey," Mitch walked out onto the balcony and leaned against the railing beside me.

"Jackson's right." I muttered, looking down and away from Mitch.

"What do you mean?"

"I about attacked him because he said I couldn't go. I never felt so angry about anything. Not when we were in Mississippi, tracking that wolf. Not when we were in Rio. But tonight, I just wanted to rip his face off."

"It has to be the shot. Increasing aggression on the wolf's part. We'll try something else if you want to." I looked up at him and fell into his eyes.

"I'll do whatever it takes to get rid of this side of me. I can't live my entire life fearing that I'm gonna kill someone just because the wrong words were said."

"We'll figure something out. But right now," He stood up and pulled me into him. "I want to repeat what went on in the bed a couple hours ago." I looked up at him and smiled.

"Sure you got enough energy for that?"

"Do you?"

"Why don't you find out?"

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I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing and I groaned as I was forced to open my eyes and stare into the blinding light of the sun coming in from the balcony doors. I blinked a couple times and once again a frown crossed my face as I stared at the empty spot beside me. My phone ringing brought me back to the reason why I woke up in the first place. I rolled over and reached for my phone on the nightstand groaning as my sore muscles stretched me. I grabbed it and flipped it open and immediately answered it when I saw Mitch on the caller ID.

"Hello-" I began to answer but was cut off

"Calla, are you inside?" Mitch asked hastily.

"Well, hello to you too."

"Callana, please tell that you're still at the house." I sat up at the tone of his voice, full of worry and fear.

"Yeah, I just woke up. And according to Jackson, I'm not allowed to go anywhere. Why? What's wrong, Mitch?"

"The bear from the lab just woke up and got out. I just had to call and see if you were safe."

"Mitch, you of all people should know that one, the bear would be heading back to its sleuth and two, I can take care of myself."

"I know. I just had to make sure."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a small cut. But I'm fine."

"Do you want me to come to the lab?"

"No. Just stay inside. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay. I'll see you soon." And with that he hung up.

"Sooner than you think." I got up and threw on yesterday's clothes not wanting to waste time to find a new pair of clothes. I slipped on my shoes as I walked out the door and got into one of the rental cars and I began to drive to the lab. I swung into the parking lot and pulled into a parking space and walked inside to the front desk. "Hi, I'm with Dr. Mitchell Morgan. He should be in the back right now." The lady looked me up and down for a moment before waving me off down the hallway to the lab. I walked through the double doors to the lab to see Mitch at the lab's computer on speaker phone with Jackson and the rest of the team.

"Sadly, no." Mitch said to the others as he looked up from his computer at me with a confused look on his face. "What are you doing here? Told you I was fine."

"Well, I came to make sure you were as fine as you said you were." I said, walking over to him and looking at the shattered glass of the back door where the bear must have escaped through.

"You missed quite a party."

"Yeah, I can see that." I stood beside him and looked at his left cheekbone and saw a long scratch from the corner of his eye to his nose. "Nice little scratch you got there."

"I know, it's hot, right?" I laughed and cupped his cheek in my hand. He sighed and closed his eyes as he pressed his cheek further into my hand.

"I should have been here to protect you."

"You were doing what you were told."

"Yeah, what a good little doggie I am."

"Okay." Jackson said through the phone. "We're at the forest, Mitch, northwest corner. Where's the bear?"

"In the woods." Mitch answered, looking at the GPS tracking on the computer. "Due west of you. About five hundred yards in. It looks like Park Services are already there."

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"This is the DNA profile of our bear from the lab." Mitch explained when the others met up with us at the lab after capturing the sleuth of bears. "And this is the same bear's DNA six years ago, when he was first tagged." I loked at the screen as Mitch overlapped the two DNA samples and I stared in shock at the difference of the two.

"That doesn't make any sense." I breathed.

"Mm-hmm."

"It changed." Jamie said.

"Mm-hmm."

"Because of the mother cell."

"Uh, yes and no."

"What does that mean?" Jackson asked.

"Okay, think of it this way. None of the earth's creatures are born perfect. Right? We all have genetic anomalies. Be it a birthmark, double jointed wrists, webbed toes. . . but the anomalies that become the norm are the- the ones that are adaptive. That are more useful to survival. Like opposable thumbs."

"What does it have to do with animals?" Chloe inquired.

"The traits we've seen. The bear's endoskeleton, th-the bats flying abnormally high, lions seemingly communicating over long distances. . ."

"They all make their species more capable of survival." Jackson said. "Stronger, better."

"And what I think. . . Just like our ancestors developed opposable thumbs, I think the Mother Cell is just accelerating these mutations in the animal kingdom that we would see occur naturally but not for another. . . several generations. Maybe a couple hundred years from now, depending on how long it takes us to screw up the planet."

"But we're seeing it now because of the mother cell." I said.

"But here's the good news. . ."

"If the mother cell can make a naturally occuring situation worse. . . maybe it can do the opposite." Jackson said.

"Correct."

"But what's the opposite?" Abraham asked.


	6. Chapter 6

I walked down the docks beside Mitch behind the others trying to convince him to let me stay with him intsead of going with the others to check out the rat infestation on Pender Island. My white blonde hair swayed in the wind coming off the water.

"I'm just saying, all five of us don't need to go." I insisted. "I could come with you. We can go through the Reiden documents from Paris, and you can go and talk all things mother cell with your friend at Harvard."

"I think you should stay with the others." He said and I scoffed. "A day on the island is a good way to stay under the radar. And if anyone is looking into Ben Shafer's death, Jamie will be more safe because she'll have your watchful eyes watching her back." We stopped when we got to the end of the docks and turned to each other.

"You know, you keep saying things like that, people are gonna start to think you care." He smirked at me and I smirked back but my smile dropped when something crossed my mind. "What if I lose control of my wolf?" He cupped my right cheek with his hand and I sighed and leaned into it.

"Just think of me."

"I've grown attached to you. I don't want you to go."

"I'll make it up to you tonight."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Do I at least get a goodbye kiss?" His smile grew as he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. I moaned, yearning for more, but before I could deepen the kiss, he pulled away.

"You'll get the rest later. Now go catch up with the others." I sighed and pulled away from him and ran to catch up with the others.

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I stood on the porch of the abandoned hotel waiting for Abraham to pick the lock to the front door.

"Come on, you son of a-" Abraham cursed at the lock.

"You used to be good at this." Jackson teased.

"Ha, ha. Got it." The lock clicked and the door opened and we stepped into the musky, dark foyer of the hotel.

"Thirty seven seconds. You're slowing down."

"It's the salt air. It makes the locks stick." Jamie went to go flip a light switch but the lights went out as soon as they turned on.

"Well, okay then." Jamie sighed.

"Guess they're not finished with the wiring." Jackson suggested.

"I'll have a look for a circuit panel." Abraham offered as he pulled out a metal cage trap. "See if I can get some light."

"Hey, the exterminator left some traps." Chloe said. "Look." In almost every corner, there were rat traps. The original kind where it killed the rats.

"It hasn't been touched. Those traps are no good to us because they are store brought junk intended to kill the rats. Unlike like what we've brought, which should merely trap them, hopefully becoming a honeymoon suite for a male and female for Mitch to observe."

"The fact that it's coming to this, searching for killer rats in an abanonded hotel." I muttered. "I should have gone to college."

"I thought you did go to college."

"Should have gone to a better college."

"Well, happy hunting." Jackson said. "Chloe and I will check the traps on the upper floors. You guys look down here."

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"Looks like we have a winner." Abraham announced when we came back to the front of the hotel after searching the entire first floor.

"Careful." I said as Abraham bent down to grab the rat from the trap. "Don't let it bite you." The rat let out a harsh squeak as Abraham reached out and pulled him out.

"Hey!" I jumped at the sound of Jackson's voice behind him as him and Chloe walked over to us as Abraham pulled the rat out.

"Male." Abraham informed us as he put the rat in the bag.

"Okay, now we just need a female."

"At the risk of sounding overly girly, this is all really, really. . . really digusting." Jamie groaned.

"Come on, the sooner we find a female rat, the sooner we get out of here."

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We walked the hallways of the second floor trying to get a better estimation on the rat problem inside the hotel. The elevator motor kicked and then the bell dinged when it reached our floor.

"Hey, guys." Jamie called to us. "The elevator's here."

"Must be the sheriff." Jackson said but he was dead wrong. The elevator doors opened and inside was packed, I mean, PACKED, with thousands of rats. They came pouring out of the elevator shaft like rain and scampered across the hotel floor towards us. We turned on our heels and ran into the stairwell and closed the door behind us as thousands of rats ran right past us. "Where's Chloe?" We looked around us but Chloe wasn't with us.

"Oh, my God." I breathed.

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"She's not answering her phone." Jackson breathed as we walked through the hallways, looking for Chloe after the rats disappeared.

"She'll be okay." Jamie reassured him. "Chloe's a bad-ass, right?" Muffled squeaking brought us to a halt as we looked around for the source of the noise.

"It's coming from your game bag, Abe." I said. Abraham opened the bag and stared down into it in shock.

"Impossible." Abe gasped. I looked down into the bag with Jackson and Jamie and saw a pack of baby rats.

"Dude." Jamie breathed. "Thought you said that was a male rat."

"It _is_ a male, trust me."

"Well, how could a male rat give birth?"

"I don't know." Jackson took the bag from Abraham and begant to count the baby rats.

"Some. . . some species reproduce asexually." Jackson muttered.

"Yeah, insects, fish, reptiles." I informed him. "But not freaking rats, Jackson. No mammals reproduce asexually."

"They're all male."

"Are you sure?" Abraham asked him.

"You want to count rodent penises, be my guest."

"I'll take your word for it. But how can that be?"

"I don't know. I-I don't know, but it is."

"Well, is this so unusual?" Jamie inquired.

"Yes." Abraham, Jackson and I exclaimed.

"It is statistically unheard of for a standardized litter to be comprised of entirely one sex." Jackson said. "I-I supposed it's not impossible, but i-it's-"

"H-highly unlikely." Abraham finished for him.

"Okay, animals reproduce to ensure the survival of their speices, right? But what if that's changing? Think about the mutations we've seen in the other animals. The lions communicating over great distances. The bears and their endoskeletons. The bats, the rats. The whole thing. What if these mutations are not about the. . . survival of one species, but the destruction of another?"

"Meaning. . . us?" Jamie questioned him.

"We gotta find Chloe."

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"Okay, let's assume, for a minute, that the cargo ship loaded with Reiden products accelerated the reproduction of the few rats on board." Jackson said as we made our way down the hotel's staircase. "Okay, then once the ship got close and was no longer safe, they had to find another viable option."

"This abandonded hotel." Abraham said. The pups started squeaking from inside the game bag.

"Hey, guys. It's. . ." Jackson stopped and looked down inside the bag at the pups. "They don't sound right. They're suffering."

"They're dehydrated." I noted, examining their dry skin.

"It's no wonder." Abraham confirmed. "Male rates can't nurse."

"Well, like, up until ten minutes ago, they couldn't give birth, either." Jamie reminded him.

"Yeah, well, something's nursing the pups." Jackson said. "I mean, given how quickly the rats are multiplying, they have to be feeding. There's got to be females around somewhere."

"And they must be big." Abraham added.

"Big?" Jamie asked. "Why big?"

"To feed all these pups." I informed her like it was obvious.

"Wait, are you- are you guys saying that there are some kind rat queens?"

"If there are, we have to find them." Jackson said. "Okay, that would be crucial to understanding this mutation."

"How about you guys go and find your rat queen and I go and find Chloe?"

"Jamie, do you really want to be in this place alone?" Abraham inquired.

"How about we stick together and find them both, huh?" Jackson sighed as he began to walk down the stairs again.

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"Where are we going?" Jamie asked as we headed back outside.

"Rats build nests to raise their young, so you'd think with this many rats we'd see a bunch of nests." Jackson explained as we headed to the stairs that led to the basement.

"But we haven't seen any."

"Exactly. So maybe if we're looking for one big queen rat, we should be looking for one big nest."

"Something tells me you already know where such an area might be." Abraham said.

"I think I do."

"Well, being the wise ones we are, we'll do our best to avoid such an area."

"We shall not." Abraham sighed as we headed down the steps.

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As we descended the stairs, the moisture on the stones smelled musty and of mold. I followed behind Jackson with Jamie and Abraham behind me. We opened up a door and entered a small room. The painting on the stone walls were peeling off and shelves were all along the walls. . . but no rats.

"Perhaps you are wrong." Abraham said. He spoke too soon. Down the hallway and to the right, high pitch squeaking and squealing sounded.

"I'm afraid not." Jackson breathed. We slowly made our way down the hallway and peered around the corner to see thousands and thousands of rats scurrying around. Throughout the nests were larger rats with pups nursing. Jamie and I gasped in shocked.

"Dear lord!"

"Oh, my God." Jamie gasped.

"I think we're all agreed that these creatures need to be destroyed. Any suggestions on how to do that?"

"Guys!" Chole's voice sounded from the top of the stairs.

"Chole!" Jackson called back to her. "Stay out of here!" Chole came bursting in with the sheriff behind her. Chole had a flamethrower in her hands and immediately lit the room up in flames, keeping the rats at bay. "Queens! Get the queens!"

"Get out of here!"

"Go, go, go!" Jackson ushered us out of the room and out of the hotel.


	7. Chapter 7

"Oh, my God, you bastard." Jamie spit at Mitch as he sat on the edge of a fountain in the middle of a park as we surrounded him. I had my arms crossed over my chest with my left hand over my mouth as I listened to Mitch's story of how he went to Reiden Global and almost traded the Mother Cell for medicine that could cure his daughter, Clementine.

"It was for my daughter." Mitch tried to explain.

"Even so."

"You gonna tell me if you could've saved your mother, you wouldn't have done the same?" Jamie was silent at that comment.

"So, you didn't it?" Chloe inquired. "You traded the Mother Cell for the medicine." Mitch looked around the park for any bystanders before he reached into his bag and pulled out the Mother Cell for us to see before he put it back in his bag.

"No. I didn't."

"But you almost did." Jackson reminded him.

"Yeah, I almost did. For my daughter."

"We're here trying to do this, trying to come up with a solution for everything, and you would, you would just give that away?"

"Look. While I'm not trying to minimize any of it, you're all focusing on the wrong guy right now. Okay? Delavane? Not who we think he is."

"How can you be so sure?" Abraham asked him. "Maybe he had a good reason to be there."

"Oh, get serious. I saw his face. Trust me." Chloe let out a chuckle.

"You're asking us to trust you?" Chloe questioned him.

"I'm asking you to call my character into question at a later date. Delavane was not at Reiden because it was Bring Your Shadowy Interpol Agent to the Office Day. He-he was there because he works there."

"Did he see you?" Mitch stared at Chloe for a second before he dropped his head and looked at the ground, giving us an obvious answer and Chloe let out another chuckle. "This is bad."

"So you're saying. . . the company that put us together is the same company that we're trying to take down?"

"It appears that way." Mitch said, looking back up. "But why? Why would Delavane put us together?" Chloe's phone rang and she walked away to answer it.

"So, what else, Mitch?" Jackson asked him.

"What else what?"

"What else are you lying to us about?"

"That's enough." I snapped at Jackson, glaring at both him, Abraham and Jamie. My wolf was starting to get angry, pushing to get free to protect her mate. Jackson turned his attention to me, brown eyes blazing.

"You're not on his side, are you?"

"Yeah, he tried to trade in the Mother Cell," I turned to Mitch and glared at him to let him know that I may be defending him, I wasn't happy with him. "shame on you," I looked back at Jackson. "but he was doing it for his daughter. I can't hold something like that against a man. But he should have talked to us about it instead of hiding it and keeping it a secret. So, back to pressing matters, the Mother Cell- can we really use it to make a cure?"

"Yes. . . theoretically, it can be used to reverse the mutation." Mitch answered.

"Theoretically?" Jamie asked.

"I believe that if we introduce the Mother Cell into the DNA of a mutated animal, we could possibly synthesize a cure. But here's the problem. In order to do that, we need an animal who has mutated and has not been exposed to the Mother Cell."

"But does such an animal even exist?" Abraham inquired. "Every animal we've come into contact with has been mutated because of Reiden."

"Even if there is, how would we possibly find it?" Jackson questioned him. "There infected animals on every continent."

"I know." Mitch said. "It's like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles in every country on Earth. But without that needle, we don't have a cure." Chloe came walking back over to us.

"We have to go." She said.

"What happened?" Abraham asked.

"That was my colleague at the PGSE. The FBI has issued a warrant for my arrest. Jamie's, too."

"Ben Shafer." Jamie gasped as she gripped her head with both hands in both fear and shock. "Oh, my God, Chloe. I'm so sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize for. It's only a matter of time before they connect the rest of you. We have to go, guys."

"Hey, h-hold on." Jackson said. "Go where, huh? If-if the FBI is after us, if Delavane works for Reiden, where are we gonna go?"

"Yeah, I don't speak spy, but. . . pretty much feels like game over." Mitch said. I walked over to him and gingerly touched his arm.

"Don't say that." I pleaded as I looked up at him. He stared down at me and the longer he stared at me, the softer his sweet brown eyes got. "We'll figure something out." I looked to the rest of the group. "We will figure something out."

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"Maybe we should not be standing around in a clump like this." Jamie said as we stood outside of a drug store waiting for Abraham to come back out. Abraham came out and rejoined the group and we started walking down the block as Abraham pulled out disposable phones and handed one to each of us.

"Like the lady said, if they're going to treat us like criminals, we need to act like criminals." Abraham said. "Everybody gets one."

"Any calls you make, keep them short." Chloe instructed us. "From now on, we pay cash for everything. And no more contact with family and friends."

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen." Mitch objected. "Not for me, anyway."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I got to get these meds to Clem." A police siren whooped in the background. "And FBI or not, I'm bringing 'em to her."

"All right, guys, stop, just stop." Jackson said and we stopped walking to turn and face him. "This, this isn't gonna work, okay? We can't just be reactive to this thing. We got to get out in front of it. Now, we've been together a couple months as a team, we're doing pretty good, so now. . . now we got to save our own asses, and we got to save the world."

"That's a bit dramatic, but well said."

"Agreed." Chloe agreed. "What's the plan?"

"All right, first off, it's time to go public with this thing." Jackson said. "Now, we need a more official outlet than your blog, Jamie, but we obviously can't risk just walking into a news station, so who do you know? Do you know someone that you can contact?"

"Yeah." Jamie answered after she thought about it for a moment.

"Okay. Abe, Callana, take Mitch in the car and go get those meds to Clementine."

"Okay." Abraham agreed and I gave a nod of understanding.

"What about us?" Chloe asked him.

"I've got an idea for us." Jackson said.

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I crouched down beside Abraham holding the screws for the license plates for him as he changed them on the car. Mitch was a couple yards away from us finishing up a phone call.

"Yeah, I'll meet you at the house." Mitch said. "Anything comes up, just call me on this number. . . Yeah, I had to change phones. It's a long story. . . Okay. Bye." He hung up. I took the old license plate from Abraham and handed him the new one.

"We're going to your ex's house?" Abraham asked him. "Maybe we should go somewhere that the police wouldn't think of, just in case."

"Yeah, it might be the worse idea I've ever had. But. . . thank you for coming with me. . . you, too, Calla." As much as the nickname soothed my agitated nerves, I glared at him. Abraham turned to face Mitch. I could feel waves of anger flowing off of him.

"I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for your daughter."

"Look, I know what I did was wrong. If it's gonna make you feel better, take a swing at me. Serious, go ahead." I didn't want to do that. Causing him any pain would make me feel worse, not better.

"Believe me, that's the last thing you want right now." A bird squawked behind Abraham and the sound ricocheted like a hundred bullets in my ears. I dropped the screws and covered my ears as my sensitive hearing picked the noise up over and over again. "Ta!" Abraham yelled at the bird and it flew away, but not far. It went to a group of other birds and still squawked. "That sound, it's not normal, is it?"

"I'd say that's pretty far from normal." Mitch crouched down next to me and took my hands away from my ears to let me know that it was okay. "Are you okay?" I stared at the birds as I slowly nodded.

"Couple of months ago in Cape Town, the crew of a fishing trawler reported how a flock of razorbills attacked their boat. People were convinced they were after their haul of squid. But the captain was convinced they were after the crew. He described the sound the razorbills made as they circled overhead like cicadas."

"Let's get out of here."

"You drive." Abraham tossed Mitch the keys and he helped me up from the ground and into the car.

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"Her car's not here." Mitch muttered as we got out of the car and walked up the walkway of the classic urban house.

"I don't think it's a good idea for us to linger." Abraham said as he looked around. Mitch walked up to the front door and tried the doorknob but the door was locked.

"Back when Audra and I were together, she had an amazing ability to lock herself out of the house. Twice in one day, if you can believe that." I groaned and doubled over as I covered my ears against the squawking again. My wolf growled in frustration against the noise.

"That's the same noise we heard the sparrows make."

"But these aren't sparrows."

"It's like they're talking to each other. I know that birds have a universal warning call."

"But nothing resembling a common language." Dogs howled and barked in the distance and a pack of dogs raced down the street past us.

"Is it just me, or. . .?" Mitch's phone rang and he pulled it out and answered it.

"Audra. Where are you?. . . I-I can barely hear you. . . You're. . . You're at the park? Audra? Audra! Audra, tell me what's going on. Audra? Audra!" He hung up, hands shaking. "Damn it."

"What happened?" I asked, straightening back up and dropping my hands, trying my best to ignore the sounds.

"Let's go. She said they're at the park. The birds are attacking."

"Do you know which park?"

"Yes."

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The engine revved as Mitch passed yet another car as he sped towards the park.

"What if we use sound to repel the birds?" Abraham suggested.

"What?" Mitch asked him.

"Like the oscillator you built in Rio."

"Yeah, maybe that would work, but we don't have an oscillator. And even if we did, we don't have time for a maybe."

"So, what are we going to do?" A siren wailed nearby and a firetruck horn blared.

"I got something."

"What is it?"

"I was here last year. In Boston for-for a conference."

"Yes?"

"And there was a Dalmatian outside our hotel."

"Mitch, I don't. . ."

"I was there! I saved the dog's life. Its name was, uh, uh. . . Rufus!"

"Rufus?"

"Rufus was the dog's name. His owners were very grateful."

"Mitch, you've lost me."

"Dalmatian, firehouse dog!"

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We arrived at the park with the firetruck behind us. I got out of the car and looked around as a flock of crows swarmed the park. I looked through the black swarm to the source of screaming on the other side of the park. I saw a little blonde hair girl doubled over holding a baby tightly to her chest as a group of crows tried to get at her. She was getting dangerously close to the edge of the park's pool. I didn't even think twice. I lunged forward and everything else followed in suit. I phased and raced across the park while Abraham set up the fire hose. I barked and snapped at the crows around me trying to scare them off as I pushed myself faster and faster, welcoming the burning sensation in my legs. I watched as the girl's foot slipped and she started falling into the pool, letting go of the baby. I leapt forward snatching the baby gingerly by the blanket that it was wrapped in and carefully set it under a park bench in the grass where the crows couldn't get to it.

"She can't swim!" A woman's voice screamed from the playground. I turned on my paws and rushed back to the pool to see the girl sinking to the bottom. I jumped in and as soon as the water touched my fur, I become a two ton weight. It was the first time swimming in this form so I had to get used to how to keep my head above the water. I kicked out with my rear right then pawed with front left. I did the same thing vice versa. I doggy paddled over to the girl and pushed her arms up around my neck. She clung to my fur and gasped for air as I broke the surface of the water. I swam to the edge to where the woman was waiting for her daughter and she helped her out. Mitch was there too, clinging to her too. I shifted back and hauled myself out of the water. I walked past Clementine, Audra and Mitch to the baby under the bench and picked it up to give to the fire marshals.

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"More bad news." Jamie said as we sat around Audra's house. Well, I should say everyone but me sat around. I stood in the middle of the doorway, shivering in my wet clothes while Audra tried to find me some dry clothes. "Wilson's out. His executive editor called Reiden to follow up."

"And let me guess-five minutes later, their lawyers were slapped with a cease and desist by the Reiden legal team. They are good at what they do."

"Maybe we should just turn ourselves in." Abraham said.

"What good would we be in custody?" I chattered, running my hands up and down my arms, trying to warm myself up. Mitch walked down a hallway and stopped in front of a cabinet and pulled out a towel. He came back to me and wrapped my towel around me and pulled me close to his chest. I sighed and closed my eyes as I leaned my head into him.

"At least we could tell our story."

"What—To a roomful of cops who want to try us for murdering a federal agent?" Jamie asked him.

"We can't just give up." Jackson said.

"So, what are we gonna do?" Chloe inquired. "We cannot go to the press. We cannot go to the authorities."

"You're right. The only people that can help us now are in this room."

"Hey, guys." Abraham breathed as he turned up the TV. We turned to see a reporter on the news.

"There was also a separate bird attack at Bowler Park in Brighton." The reporter reported. "Three adults were killed, sixteen others were injured, including four children. City and state officials are currently investigating whether the three attacks are related. Residents are being asked to use caution when outdoors." Abraham turned off the TV.

"It's getting bigger." Jamie said. "The animals are getting more aggressive."

"If it keeps progressing like this, it won't matter what we decide to do, because by then, it will be too late." Jackson said. "We have to do something now."

"Fine." Abraham agreed. "I agree. But what?"

"I'll be back, Calla." Mitch whispered as he pulled the towel tighter around me and went upstairs.

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A few minutes later, Mitch came running back down the steps calling out for Jackson.

"Jackson, do you remember when you showed me all those pictures of the walls in your dad's compound?" Mitch asked him.

"Yeah, of course." Jackson answered.

"There was one picture in particular that had a list of traits—uh, Felidae, Carnivora, all the big cat taxonomies. Specifically, leopards."

"I remember." Abraham said.

"There has to be a reason for that. What if your dad was searching for a cure, too? What if that's our needle?"

"Leopards?" Chloe inquired as Jamie walked over to the laptop.

"Have we ruled it out yet?"

"Okay, leopards are found in India, the Arabian Peninsula, the Himalayan foothills, Leopard sub-Saharan Africa. . ."

"But we've ruled out most of those areas already." I reminded her.

"Yeah, but there are some areas in Africa where there's no reported Reiden activity." Jackson said as he laid a map across the table.

"Okay. . . last year, six people killed in a small village near the Zambezi river." Jamie researched. "Zambia, Africa, thirteen injured."

"Zambia." Jackson looked across the map. "Nothing."

"Double-check the ledger, make sure you didn't miss anything." Mitch ordered.

"Double-checking." Chloe confirmed.

"Okay, six months ago, six separate leopard attacks in villages along a twenty-mile stretch of the Luangwa Valley. And. . . Zambia's largest agricultural company is owned by one of Reiden's biggest critics."

"That might explain why Reiden products aren't being used there." Abraham said.

"And. . .?" Jackson asked Chloe as she checked the ledger.

"There's nothing." She said. "No mention of Zambia anywhere."

"I think we just found our needle." Mitch smiled.

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I laid in the very back of the car, legs curled up to my chest as I was pressed tight into Mitch's side. My shivering had ceased but I still felt very cold and being close to Mitch was beginning to warm me up.

"I don't want to be a buzzkill, but it's about seven thousand miles to Zambia." Mitch said. "It's gonna take more than a police scanner and some dirt roads to get us there."

"You're right—don't be a buzzkill." Abraham said. "One thing at a time." The birds squawked outside and it got louder as Jamie rolled down the window.

"Hey. Listen. Do you guys hear that?" Jamie asked.

"Yup." Mitch acknowledged her. "We've been hearing it all day. Different species of birds, all making the exact same noise." The noise faded a little bit as Jamie rolled the window back up.

"Mitch thinks the birds are developing a common tongue." Abraham informed the group.

"You think the eagles can talk to the finches." Chloe said.

"Can talk to the skua, can talk to the black-headed grosbeak. . . There are maybe three hundred billion birds in the world. Imagine if they could all talk to each other." Mitch said.

"If that's true, they could send a message around the world and back." Jamie said.

"Let's just figure out a way to get to Zambia." I was falling asleep in Mitch's arms when he placed his mouth against my ear. "I never thanked you for what you did for my daughter." His hot breath against my earlobe sent a chill down my spine as I inhaled sharply and closed my eyes.

"I was just doing what was right." I muttered, tilting my head up to look at him.

"After what I tried to do with the Mother Cell, I didn't think you would ever do anything for me again. I didn't think you would want to still be with me."

"Yes, I'm angry, I'm furious at what you did, Mitch, but you were trying to help Clementine and like I said, I can't hold something like that against a man." His brown eyes gleamed and he leaned down and pressed his lips against my forehead and I smiled involuntarily.


	8. Chapter 8

"Electro-what?" I questioned Mitch as we sat at a picnic table waiting for Chloe and Jackson to pick up some food.

"Electroporator." Mitch repeated. "We're gonna need one once we find the leopard, to combine its stem cells with the Mother Cell."

"Wait." Jamie said. "Jackson, we saw one of these. In Mobile, in the optometrist's office."

"Yeah." Jackson agreed. "Evan Lee Hartley thought it would help cure him."

"Makes sense." Mitch said. "Electroporators are used to introduce new coding DNA."

"So we're probably not gonna find one in the wilds of Africa." Jamie said.

"No."

"So we'll have to take one with us." Jackson said as we got up from the table and headed back to the car and Abraham.

"And it's not like we can just swing by a convenience store and pick one up. It's a highly specialized piece of equipment."

"Where do we find one?" Chloe inquired.

"Genetics labs. Certain hospitals. So we can add that to our list of impossible stuff to do."

"Well, no one said saving the world is gonna be easy."

"Hey, guys." Abraham called to us as we approached the car and he turned up the radio so we all could hear the report. "Listen to this."

"Afraid, no." A CDC official said. "Cautious, perhaps. The CDC is, however, looking into the matter. We've heard enough reports about aberrant animal behavior that we're considering the possibility of a virus."

"It's not a virus." Mitch growled under his breath.

"What can the people at home do?" The host questioned the CDC official.

"If you notice any odd behavior in your pet, see your local veterinarian." The CDC official answered.

"Well, that was helpful." Abraham said.

"So. . . I got a question." Mitch spoke up. "If we keep driving south, straight through Florida, eventually we're gonna run out of terra firma."

"That's it." Jackson beame and we all looked at him questioningly. "Florida."

"Florida?" Chloe asked him.

"Let's go to Clearwater."

"Why?" I inquired. "I mean, never in the course of human events has Clearwater, Florida ever been the solution to anything."

"Well, today it is. In Clearwater, there is a way to get back to Africa."

"What's in Clearwater?" Jamie inquired.

"Oh, no. You're think about Ray, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." Jackson confirmed.

"No. Not that. Not Ray."

"Who's Ray?" I snapped, getting frustrated that they were talking in circles. Abraham sighed before he spoke.

"He's a nightmare."

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"Okay, so who's this friend of yours?" Jamie asked Jackson and Abraham as we sat around a motel room.

"He is not our friend." Abraham clarified.

"He's an ex-Marine, an animal rights activist, and he spends a lot of time in Africa, interfering with poachers." Jackson explained. "That's how Abe and I met him."

"He's crazy."

"He's not crazy. He's. . . he's just. . . not uncrazy."

"Because that makes perfect sense." I retorted, leaning up against a wall as Mitch paced back and forth in front of me.

"His group calls themselves the Free Animal Rights Militia." Chloe informed us as she did her research on the laptop.

"F.A.R.M." Mitch tasted the name on his tongue and made a funny face. "That's a clever name. I've dealt with these kind of people before. They're zealots. Don't know the first thing about animal welfare."

"Well, not to mention some of us are already wanted by the police." Jamie reminded him. "Maybe committing another crime doesn't help our case."

"Well, I agree, but we gotta get out of here, and we gotta get out of her fast." Jackson said as I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead as another heat wave washed through me. "I admit, okay? Ray. . . Ray can be a bit of a loose cannon." Abraham exchanged looks with Jackson. "Okay, maybe more than a bit. But everything he has ever done has been for the animals."

"Look, I know desperate times require desperate measures. . . but this isn't desperate." Abraham said. "This is. . . reckless."

"I understand your reservations, Abraham, but I'm with Jackson." Chloe stated. I walked over to the AC unit and turned it down to sixty degrees. I sighed with content and leaned against the window as I cold air hit my face, cooling me instantly down. "I don't really think we have a better option."

"Look, no offense, Chloe, but you don't know Ray Endicott. This is a terrible idea."

"I gotta say, I'm with Abe. . . meaning I'm anti-doing this thing with these. . . losers." Mitch started to say and I straightened up and turned to look at him. "But. . . I'm just gonna put this out there: We could probably get an electroporator from that zoo."

"We could?" Chloe questioned him.

"Clearwater Zoo has a pathology lab, which means they most likely have one."

"Even so. . ." Jamie began to speak but Abraham called us into the other room. We piled into the next room and turned our attention to the news.

"Jackson Oz. . . Chloe Tousignant, Abraham Kenyatta, Mitchell Morgan and Callana Rycho." The reporter listened our names as each one of our pictures popped onto the screen. "These five people are all possible accomplices in Agent Shafer's murder. We're asking anyone who has seen them or who has any information concerning their whereabouts, to please step forward and contact us on our special hotline."

"Well, all of our names and faces are out there now." Jackson said. "The chances of us getting recognized—getting caught—just quadrupled."

"Your friend is truly the only hope we've got." Chloe told Abraham.

"He's not our friend." Abraham muttered in defeat.

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"All right, so we've hit up a couple of zoos before." Ray said as we crowded around a table with the map of the zoo in front of us. We were in a rundown factory with almost every window shattered and rats crawling in every corner. "We found what works best for us is a two-pronged assault, so four of us are gonna go in here, four of us in here."

"Toss in a couple of flash-bangs, and the rent-a-cops won't know what hit 'em." A blonde hair girl next to Ray added.

"Flash-bangs?" Jamie asked. "Seriously?"

"The etymology of the term gung ho comes from the Chinese meaning work together, but I find it can also mean: excitable morons groping for a cause." Mitch stated.

"You kidding me, man?" A short black man yelled at Mitch and the guy started walking around the table aggressively towards Mitch. My protective instincts engaged and I believed my wolf was in control at that time, trying to protect her mate. I walked to the left side of Mitch and stepped between them too. Looking the guy dead in the eye, I let out a low, menacing growl to warn him off and the guy was a little startled.

"My friend, I wouldn't if I was you." Abraham warned him. I kept my eyes locked on the man until he got back to his original spot at the table but even then I didn't relax. I looked around the table, seeing if there was anyone else who wanted to cause harm to Mitch.

"Who are these guys again, Ray?" The blonde hair chick asked.

"These are some old chums of mine, who are presently in the mind that animals are uniting against us." Ray explained. "Which we deserve, by the way."

"Good for them. I mean, we have been eating 'em and keeping 'em in cages since the dawn of time."

"All right, how about we just focus on what it is we're trying to do here." Jackson said.

"Okay, look, once we're in, one of your people can go fetch the, uh, velociraptor thing from the path-lab." Ray said carelessly.

"Electroporator." Mitch and I corrected him.

"And I'll be going with Mitch to go get." I added.

"We might need you somewhere else inside the zoo." Ray said. I placed both hands flat on the table and glared at him.

"I ain't leaving him alone while you have lunatics on your side of the team." Ray chuckled.

"Ain't that sweet? Little girlfriend protecting the little scientist." I snapped and all I saw was red. I understood why Abraham didn't like this guy. I lunged at him and before I could shift or grab ahold of Ray, two sturdy arms wrapped around my middle and swung me around, away from Ray. He doubled over on top of me and pressed his mouth against my ear, whispering soothing words to me but I had too much rage racing through my veins to care what he had to say to me. I was on the verge of shifting and Mitch knew it too.

"You need to calm down, Calla." Mitch whispered to me. "You can't listen to people like Ray. Don't let him get to you." I was breathing heavily trying to keep myself from shifting but all I could think about was Ray and how I just wanted to just claw that smirk right off his band boy face. "Don't think about him. Think about me." I closed my eyes as those words echoed in my brain. _Don't think about him. Think about me._ "Breathe in, breathe out. Just think about me." I let out all of my air in my lungs and started breathing slowly, matching my breaths with Mitch's. I gripped both of Mitch's forearms in my hands, feeling him through his clothes, feeling him in this moment with me. I took my final breath and gently pushed him away from me letting him know that I was okay now and the wolf was caged again.

"Fine, you two get that little toy and the rest of us are gonna free the animals, load 'em into the truck. We're in and out in under thirty minutes."

"What if we try a different approach?" Jackson asked.

"Yeah, like the one where we don't break into the zoo to free the animals." Mitch said.

"What, you think this is funny?" The blonde hair chick asked him.

"Oh, there's nothing funnier than adrenaline junkies trying to mask their thrill-seeking in altruism."

"Zoos are an idea whose time have come and gone."

"Tell that to the dozens of endangered species who have benefited from captive breeding programs."

"All right, relax, relax." Ray said. "Anissa did a couple of tours in Afghanistan, took some mortar fire. Unfortunately, doctors couldn't save her sense of humor."

"Jackson?" Chloe said. "You were saying?"

"I was thinking that maybe we try more of a stealthy approach." Jackson continued his plan. "One where we get in and out without security even knowing we're there."

"And how do you propose that?" Ray inquired.

"We have a secret weapon."

"Oh, you do?"

"We do." Jackson pointed to Mitch. "Him."

"You gotta be kidding me." Anissa scuffed.

"Well, as it turns out, Miss Jarhead, I know a thing or two about zoos." Mitch informed her. "And Jamie knows a thing or two about getting information from people."

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"Here you go." Mitch muttered to me as he handed me a gold metal mask that would cover my entire face. We stood outside the zoo's back gate about to go in. I looked at the mask, back at Mitch and back again.

"Really?" I muttered. "The wolf?" I could see Mitch smiling under his antelope mask. Such a calming, majestic animal for this man.

"I think it suits you." I rolled my eyes and slipping my mask on and turned to the others, ready to get this over with.

"Open it up, Abe." Jackson ordered. The lock buzzed and the gate clanked open. "Cody, stay by the truck. I'm gonna stick with Anissa, while Mitch and Callana get the electroporator." We separated and I took the lead down the pathway to the pathology lab.

"Guys, the corridor to the pathology lab is clear." Jamie said into the earpiece. I walked up to the pathology lab door and saw the keypad next to it. I turned to look at Mitch.

"I got this." He whispered to me. "Worked at four zoos in my career. The first one just kept the factory default code." He punched in four zeros and tried to open the door but it was still locked. "Of course, that was a petting zoo."

"Great." I muttered sarcastically. "What did the second zoo use?"

"Mitch, Callana, how you doing?" Jamie asked me.

"Not terribly well." Mitch hit the second code but the door was still locked. "Mitch."

"Relax, Calla." Mitch assured me as he thought about the third code and the third one didn't work either. "The last zoo I worked at used the name of their star attraction." He punched in the name Gilbert and the door popped opened. "Et voila." I walked into the lab and I started on one side of the room and Mitch started on the other side.

"You said it was about the size of a toaster, right?" I opened up a metal cabinet and began to scan the shelves.

"Yeah, with a digital display and a couple of knobs." My eyes fell on the second from bottom shelf to a rectangular looking device. I stepped aside of Mitch to examine it to make sure it was the right device.

"Something like this?"

"Exactly like that, yes. Grab that other piece." We loaded the electroporator into the bag and got the hell out of dodge. "Calla and I got what we came for." Mitch announced as we met up with the others in the center of the zoo.

"We got trouble!" Jackson yelled to us. "Head to the truck!"

"What kind of trouble?" Ray asked him.

"No time to explain. Now, go!" We started running back to the truck when two guards cut us off and before we could turn around and go the other direction, more guards surrounded us from behind.

"Don't move!" The guards yelled at us.

"We're surrounded." Chloe breathed.

"Take off the masks."

"Put away your guns." Jackson told the guards. "We're unarmed." Next thing I know, guns are being fired and I heard Jackson call out to Ray as he dropped to the ground.

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Ray groaned in pain as Mitch and I dragged him down the steps of the warehouse. Jamie came rushing over to us as the others followed behind us, including Abraham who was fuming.

"What happened?" Jamie asked us.

"Ray got shot and Cody is dead because we didn't have backup we could count on." Anissa barked at Jamie. "That's what happened."

"Backup you could count on?" Abraham inquired. "Nobody said anything about guns. Nobody said anything about guns!" Mitch and I laid Ray on the table on his back.

"Everybody calm down." Jackson ordered. "We can point fingers later." Ray was murmuring in pain as Mitch pressed down on the shoulder wound to try to stop the bleeding or at least slow it down.

"Okay, Jamie, help us." Chloe demanded.

"Why didn't you take him to the hospital?" Jamie questioned us.

"Because if he goes to the hospital, then he goes to prison!" Anissa yelled at her. "Besides, your friend says he can help him."

"You can?"

"I hope so." Mitch said. "Otherwise GI Jane here is gonna put me down."

"Over my dead body." I growled, sneaking a glare at Anissa before moving to help Mitch.

"Okay okay, what do you need me to do?" Anissa asked.

"Just get me whatever first aid supplies you have around here, okay?" Mitch said.

"Got it!"

"Sharpest knife you can find. And a lighter to sterilize it. Grab some rope or electrical cord, whatever you got." Ray stopped moving and went perfectly still. I looked at Mitch for an explanation.

"Oh, God, is he. . ."

"He's passed out. From the pain. Probably better that way." Anissa handed Mitch some cord who handed it to Jackson. "Okay, here, tie him to the table."

"Why?" Jamie inquired.

"Cause this is gonna get rough."

"Ray's in good hands." Abraham told Anissa. "His bedside manner notwithstanding, if Mitch says he can help him, he can."

"Look, I know where the plane is, but it's not gonna do you any good." Anissa snapped.

"Why not?" Jackson questioned her.

"Because Ray's your pilot."

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I laid on my cot with my head in Mitch's lap. I've felt so tired lately and lethargic. I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep for months. I don't know if I was getting sick or not, I would have to talk to Mitch about it later but right now we were listening to Chloe and Jackson talk to us about the animal behavior they just witnessed on the truck.

"So they were all growling at you?" Mitch asked them.

"Yeah." Jackson confirmed. "Every single one of them. Like they'd all found a common enemy."

"Us." Chloe said.

"And at first it was just the serval, but then the rest of the animals joined in?" Mitch inquired.

"Yes." Jackson said. "But. . . not all at once. It was more like it was passing from one animal to the next."

"And. . . so. . . what is it?" Jamie questioned Mitch. "What's going on?"

"I don't know." Mitch said honestly. "Maybe it's some kind of emotional contagion."

"What's that mean—emotional contagion?" Chloe asked.

"It's a biological phenomenon." I answered sleepily.

"Nobody quite understands it, but it's real." Mitch added. "Like yawns are contagious. You see somebody yawning, you can't help but yawn yourself. Same thing with laughter."

"And you think that's what's happening with the animals?" Jamie inquired.

"I can't say for sure, but it's a theory."

"But if it's true, that would explain why the abnormal animal behaviors have been increasing so much these past few weeks." Jackson said.

"Because animals in proximity could be triggering each other."

"Like inside the truck." Chloe said. "You're saying one of the animals starts displaying the behavior, then it spreads from one to the next."

"Like a spark." Jackson spoke. "Something my father said, I-I didn't understand at the time, but. . . he called it the spark. Okay? He said that once the spark was lit, it would spread all over the world from animal to animal, like wildfire. And once this happened. . . it would be impossible to put out the flame."

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"Calla," His soft voice sounded like an angel and it only lulled me into a deeper sleep. "Calla, it's time to wake up." I frowned and groaned before my eyes fluttered open and looked up.

"I'm tired, Mitch." I whined.

"I know. You've been sleeping like a log. Are you feeling okay?" He pressed he wrist to my forehead. "You're burning up."

"I know. I've been so hot since we got. I thought it was just because it's Florida but then I've been so exhausted."

"Are you normally like this in the heat?" I shook my head.

"I actually have a theory."

"And what's that?" He asked as he ran his fingers through my tangled hair.

"Wolves are less active in the summer. They sleep most of the day, come out when they need to eat. They're more active in the winter. I was thinking maybe because of the heat my wolf side is overpowering my human side."

"That's a thought. Let's not worry about it now. You can sleep some more on the plane. Come on. Let's get ready." Mitch helped me up from the cot and we walked over to the table where Jackson was and started to pack some bags with water bottles, food and supplies. "I just can't believe we let it get this far. One minute Jamie's wanted for killing an FBI agent. The next minute, we're in a gunfight. At a zoo."

"You think I wanted it this way?" Jackson asked him.

"It was your idea to contact this Ray character. Doesn't take a fortune teller to figure out that. . . bad things might occur when he's around."

"Yeah, well, I didn't hear you come up with any ideas about how to get out of this country undetected."

"Right, but my no ideas beats the hell out of robbing a zoo to get out of here."

"We had no other options, Mitch. None."

"People got shot, Jackson. By masked gunmen. We were among those masked gunmen."

"Well, at least you got your electroporator."

"Boys," I pleaded. "Please, I just woke up. Let's not start this just yet. Okay?"

"Sorry, Calla." Mitch muttered as he returned to packing his bag.

"Ray's still out, huh?" Jamie inquired as she came walking down the steps and over to us.

"Yep. And I say we leave him."

"We're not leaving the guy, okay?" Jackson said. "He's hurt."

"I'm a veterinarian. I didn't take the Hippocratic Oath." I stared in shock at him as Mitch grabbed his bag and walked out of the warehouse with the rest of us behind him. Abraham and Anissa were already at the plane waiting for us.

"Are we really just gonna leave him here?" Jamie asked.

"Could put a bow on him. Leave him in front of a police station."

"We'll call an ambulance once we get to the airplane." Jackson instructed. "Then we'll call the zoo, tell 'em where they can find their animals."

"And to use extreme caution when approaching them." Chloe added. We almost got to the car when a voice sounded behind us.

"Hold on, everybody." Ray ordered and we turned around to see him stumbling out of the warehouse with a gun in his hand. He cocked it.

"Seriously, Ray?" Jackson questioned him. "What is it with you guys and guns?"

"Well, my charm only gets me so far, pal. Where's Anissa?"

"She's with Abe. They went to the plane."

"Good. Let's go get 'em then. It is my plane, after all."

"Fine. Come on."

"No, no, no. No. The plan abides. We're taking the animals."

"We can't." Chloe objected.

"Sure, we can."

"No, it's impossible. Something is wrong with them."

"And we can make it right by setting them free. So get in the truck, and let's go to Africa. Now! So who's volunteering to ride in the back. Or do you want to draw straws? All six of us can't fit in the front."

"Look, you're not getting it." Mitch said. "The animals, they're not right. It's not safe back there."

"I'll ride in the back." Jackson offered.

"Jackson, no, you cannot do that." Jamie said.

"I'll come with you." Chloe said and both them headed to the back.

"Mitch, you drive." Ray demanded. Mitch climbed into the driver's seat and I sat next to him with Jamie squeezed in beside me and Ray in the passenger seat.

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"Appreciate you saving my life, sport." Ray said to Mitch as we sped down the highway.

"You say that now." Mitch muttered. "But I might have left a nickel in your chest. Shouldn't hurt. But getting through airport security might be an adventure." The back of the truck began to swerve back and forth across the road as a banging noise sounded in the back.

"What is that?" Jamie asked.

"I'm pulling over."

"Like hell you will." Ray barked. "We're almost there." Something screeched against the pavement and I looked in the driver's side mirror to see that the back door of the truck had fallen open. Mitch slowed the truck to a stop and put it in park. He got out and ran to the back of the truck with me and Jamie behind him. Every one of the animals had gotten out of their cages and were now running freely across the road.

"We gotta get to the airport." Jackson said as Chloe and him hopped out of the back of the truck.

"Mitch, the electroporator." I said.

"I got it." He ran to the front of the truck and grabbed the bag and we started hauling ass to the airport. We ran across the black top to the plane that waited for us with the back hatch down.

"Go!" Jackson yelled to Abraham and the engines started whining and rumbling. We hopped into the back of the plane as the engines whirred at full power and the plane started to move forward. Sirens wailed behind us and I saw that it was the FBI agent who issues our arrests. He got out of his car and pointed his gun at us but Anissa pulled out her own rifle and took aim at him. Chloe yelled at her and tackled her to the ground but she got to close to the edge of the hatch. Both Anissa and Chloe fell out of the moving plane and by the time they gather bearings, it was too late for them to get back on.


	9. Chapter 9

"I'm a little envious of Chloe right now." Mitch said as we hopped out of the plane and headed to the outpost near the Zambia airport. Jackson was walking at a slow brisk walk with a sad look on his face. It had just dawned on me that he had loved Chloe and it pained me to see him like this. I don't know what I would do if I ever lost Mitch. "Nice air-conditioned cell."

"My man here in Zambia's the real deal." Ray said, holding a gun close to his chest. "He'll have the intel on leopard sightings, and he'll outfit the lot of us. This is a rough bush. We need a lot more than a tanq gun."

"Thanks, Ray." Jackson said.

"You got it. Look, I'm with you now and I aim to help, all right? Because?" Ray focused his attention to Mitch. "Come on, say it for me, sport."

"Shut up." Mitch snapped at him.

"No, one more time. Honestly, I can't get enough of it."

"The sooner we find the leopards, the sooner we save the world."

"Whew, beautiful." We walked up to the Zambia outpost and saw that it was a mess. Supplies was scattered, tables were overturn and there were drops of blood here and there.

"Hello?" Jackson called out. "Hello?" There was indistinct chatter over the TV. Jackson, Ray and Abraham walked over to the desk and Abraham and Jackson both sighed in disgust.

"What is it?" Jamie asked as me and her both started walking over to them.

"You might not want to. . ." Abraham began to tell us but it was too late. I gasped in shock as I stared in horror at the mutilated bodies on the floor.

"Oh my God!" I turned my back to the bodies and tried anything to get my mind of the image of those bodies. I tried to focus on the off-the-hook phone that was beeping and then I focused on Mitch's scent as he stood next to me.

"Well, that explains why they didn't answer our radio call." Jackson said.

"Damn it." Ray muttered. "This is my guy. Man with the plan. Looks like he put up a good fight though."

"Who would do this?" Jamie inquired.

"It's not who, it's what." I corrected her as I gather up the courage to turn back around and look at the bodies and the scratches on them. "Those are claw marks." I studied them harder. "Leopards."

"This is a slaughter." Ray said. "They weren't even feeding. It's just. . ."

"Strange." Mitch finished for him. "Yeah, strange is good. Strange tells us we're on the right track."

"You guys." Jamie called to us and we turned to see her turning up the TV.

"This is happening in every continent, every major city." The reporter reported. "This is not a coincidence."

"What would you have us do?" The second reporter asked. "Shoot all the zoo animals? What about farm animals? Pets?"

"My point is this is a virus and it's spreading fast." Another man said.

"There is no evidence of a virus." Jackson leaned forward and turned the TV off.

"At least they're starting to pay attention." Abraham said as Mitch rubbed his forehead.

"Which means it's getting worse." Mitch added.

"All the more reason for us to get moving." Jackson pressed. We loaded up bags of water because in this African heat, we're going to need it. I looked around the outpost for anything else we could use.

"The car outside—" Abraham said. "You might find some keys on those bodies over there."

"Are you serious?" Jamie questioned him but she turned and faced the bodies. I inhaled deeply and a strong metallic smell filled my nostrils and burned my mouth.

"Far body, the one with the white shirt." I called to her as I inhaled again. "Front left pocket." I heard a jingling knowing that Jamie got the keys.

"How did you know?"

"I smelt them."

"They used all our ammo in the fight." Ray growled as he checked the clips in the AK47s. "Now all we got is this tanq gun."

"All right, let's do what we came here to do." Jackson said.

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We drove down the dirt road for a good hour before we came across a river to where another truck was coming towards. An old man was driving with at least five girls in the back of the truck. They were singing a sad song in Swahili. Abraham stopped the car and got out to go talk to the old man. While they were talking in Swahili, the rest of us got out and walked to the front of the car.

"These leopards we're after—you think they started mutating before the other animals?" Ray asked Mitch.

"According to our research, yeah." Mitch said.

"I buy that. Africa is the birthplace of civilization. Every great evolutionary leap started here."

"Chui!" The old man started to yell at Abraham. "Chui!"

"Chui?" Jamie muttered as the old man got back into the truck and drove away.

"It's Swahili for leopard." I informed her.

"He said that we should turn back." Abraham told us. "He said that last night leopards came into their farm and dragged away twelve people."

"Where's their farm?" Jackson inquired.

"Hand me that map." Jackson pulled out a map and laid it across the hood of the car as Abraham pointed out their farm. He also marked down where the Zambia outpost was and where the leopards attacked a few days ago. They were completely out of character for leopards.

"It's totally random." Jamie said.

"Yeah, you'd think they'd move in a clear direction." Mitch added.

"Yeah, unless—random is part of their plan." Jackson suggested.

"When an army want to take an area, they attack in a haphazard fashion." Abraham explained. "It causes fear. Rumors of their next attack frightens people enough for them to leave even before the army arrives."

"Wait, what you're telling me, that leopards are using military strategy?" Ray questioned him.

"It's possible." Mitch said. "They're working as a group. Means they're thinking as a group."

"But leopards are solitary animals." I objected. "There group consists of two adults and their cubs. But these attacks have been consisting of at least five adult leopards. It doesn't make sense."

"We have seen stranger things, Calla."

"Well, glad we don't have any real guns then." Ray mumbled.

"Uh, if the attacks are random, how are we gonna know where to look for them?" Jamie asked.

"I have a feeling the leopards are going to find us." Abraham said.

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"What is that?" Mitch asked from the back seat as we passed a tall burly tree. "Hanging in that tree?" Abraham pulled over and we climbed out of the car and walked over to the tree. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hand as I scanned the bodies hanging in the tree. Flies buzzed around the open wounds. I looked down at the ground for anything to keep my mind off it. I noticed a dirt spot near the tree.

"The leopards." I said, crouching down and examining the pawprints in the dirt. "Judging from these prints. . . there has to be at least eight of them."

"I've never seen animals do anything like this to humans." Ray gasped as the flies continued to buzz.

"We have." Mitch said.

"Hey, these prints can't be more than a few hours old." I felt the soft dirt around the pawprints. "That means we're getting closer to the leopards. Their den may be around here."

"Closer?" Jamie asked. "You want to get closer? That suddenly sounds like a really bad idea."

"You want to find the cure, right?" Jackson inquired. "Let's go find those leopards."

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I crouched on the ground trying to put together a tent with Mitch but was having no luck. I never went camping. I hated camping. I loved the outdoors and the animals and nature and everything, I just didn't like camping for some reason.

"Didn't your father ever take you camping?" Mitch inquired.

"I preferred to study and read." I answered. "Why would I go camping? What's your excuse?"

"Nobody ever took me camping. Would you want to be stuck in a tent with Moody Teenage Mitch?"

"I don't know. Was Moody Teenage Mitch as good in bed as Moody Adult Mitch is?" Mitch let out a soft chuckle and it was infectious as I smiled and laughed too.

"Hey, no offense, but, uh, I would've had this thing up about twenty minutes ago." Ray scoffed as he walked over to us.

"It's all yours." Mitch and I stood up and moved out of Ray's way as he began to put up the tent in no time at all.

"That's annoying." Mitch muttered.

"Well, we all got different skills, don't we, Professor?" Ray questioned him. "Yours is imparting wisdom, advancing science. Mine is saving the animals. All right, there you go."

"Thank you." I mumbled. I started to lay out the sleeping bags in the tent for me and Mitch.

"Maybe you can help me with something now. See, all this doesn't make sense to me. Assuming your plan works, assuming you actually catch a live leopard, you shake up a cocktail of their stem cells and a chunk of the Mother Cell you got tucked away in your handy little man bag there. Then what, hm? Poof. All the animals are cured?"

"That's a little reductive, but, yeah, that's the hope." Mitch said. "Once we administer the cure. . ."

"See that's my point. How do you suppose you're gonna administer the cure, huh? What, a-a garden hose? We are talking about every critter in the world, right?" Something rose up against my spine and my chest and my head snapped in the direction of the woods and I let out a quiet growl against the rustling leaves.

"Calla." My head snapped to Mitch's direction but my ears were still focused on the jungle. "Calm yourself." I snorted and sighed before returning to getting the inside of the tent set up. "Well, what we do here is we take things one step at a time. So first we need to find a cure. Then we'll worry about how to deliver it. Okay?" Ray walked away at that and I crawled inside the tent and laid down on my right side, my back to the opening of the tent. Mitch crawled in behind me and draped a blanket over me.

"I'm never going to get any sleep." I groaned as the sharp pitching noise of the insects banged against my eardrums. Mitch wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. "My senses are getting stronger."

"We're close to finding a cure."

"And how do you know that it'll work on me?"

"Because I have faith."

"But what if—"

"You worry too much." He pushed me onto my back and climbed on top of me. He leaned over to close the opening of the tent before he moved gracefully as he shimmied me out of my clothes so that I was laying naked beneath him. He pressed his lips against mine as his fingers eased between the lips of my pussy, gliding through the slickness, resting upon my clit, teasing it with his feathery touch. He pistoned his fingers into my sex, my scent filling the air. I let out a small whimper as I felt my climax nearing but put a hand over my mouth to quiet myself, knowing that there were other people outside this tent. His rich chuckle rolled over me, my sex clenching. I loved his deep voice, loved lying against his chest, hearing him talk or hum above me. "C'mon, baby, let's get your orgasm out of the way, so you don't go to bed frustrated. I want my girl to sleep well tonight." He increased the rhythm of his thrusts, pumping me hard, my muscles constricting around his finger, sucking on the wonderful intrusion. My cry came out in a soft, quiet whimper as my orgasm seized me. His fingers lightly stroked my sensitive flesh until I became so oversensitive that I whined for him to stop. While I was coming down my orgasm, he fumbled with his pants and pulled his cock out. Mitch released his hard shaft and entered me with one thrust, stilling when his cock was fully seated. I sucked air through my teeth. He leaned down and kissed my jawline as he rolled his hips making me gasp. "You smell so good—this whole tent smells like your wet pussy." He thrust into me hard and fast then. I tried my best to cover every mewl, gasp and groan that came from me as he thrusted into me. I pushed up to meet his thrusts. He pinched my clit and thrust hard into me, and when I muffled a scream with my release, my pussy putting a vice hold on his cock, he groaned after me, his seed filling me.

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I woke up to the light of the fire and realized that the opening to the tent was open again. Mitch was no longer by my side and that worried me. I didn't like not knowing where he was in this jungle. I quickly pulled on my clothes and climbed out of the tent and searched frantically around the camp for Mitch. Something grabbed my arm and I gasped in shock as I turned around to see Mitch.

"You should be asleep." Mitch scolded me.

"And you should be too." I snapped at him, punching him in the arm. "And don't scare me like that."

"Sorry, I had to pee." I opened my mouth to say something but the jungle caught my attention. I looked into the jungle as I listened to the birds and insects stop chirping. Leaves rustled and a soft growling filled the air. My wolf was giving me no other choice on this one. She wasn't going to let me ignore my instincts for the second time that night. I shifted and took a defensive stance in front of Mitch as I growled at the jungle. A gun cocked to my left and I barked at Ray who held the tranq gun at me.

"Wait!" Jackson yelled at Ray. "Wait! Wait! Wait! That's Callana, Ray. It's Callana."

"That there is a wolf, Jackie Boy." Ray clarified not dropping the gun.

"She has a condition. She won't hurt you unless you do something stupid like pointing a gun at her." Ray reluctantly dropped the gun and I looked back at the jungle. "Mitch?"

"I don't know, Jackson." Mitch told him. "Something isn't right and Calla's feeling it." Ray looked into the jungle as well.

"Just saw something zip by." Ray said, pointing into the jungle. "Throw me that box of tranq darts, will you?" Jackson tossed him the darts and he put them in his pocket. "If it is a leopard, I can handle it."

"Ray." Abraham called to him as he headed into the jungle. "You stay here. We're safer together."

"Right. I got this." I let out an agitated whimper as the leaves continued to rustle and an animal howled in the distance. Another animal hooted. I kept myself pressed up against Mitch as Ray came back out of the jungle. "Nothing there. Looks like we live to die another day." A leopard roared as it jumped out of the jungle and onto to Ray. Jamie gasped and I let out a bark, backing up making Mitch move back away from the leopard.

"Ray!" Jackson yelled as the leopard dragged him away.

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There were more growls as one by one the group of leopards came out of the jungle.

"Oh, my God." Jamie gasped. A leopard started stalking over to our way and I charged forward and skidded to a halt in front of the leopard, barking and baring my teeth at it. It clawed at the air in front of us and I took the chance and lunged forward to bite the paw. The leopard yowled in pain before lumbering off into the jungle. I continued barking at it making sure that it wouldn't come back.

"Jamie, those glow sticks you had." Jackson called to her as he waved a leopard away from him with a flame stick. "Your glow sticks. Bring 'em here." Jamie slowly handed Jackson the green glow sticks. I glared into the jungle with my head hung low as I watched the shadows behind the leaves.

"Mitch, behind you." Abraham called to him. I whipped around to see a leopard stalking up behind Mitch. The leopard kicked off from the ground with its powerful legs and while it was in midair I jumped up and slammed myself into its side before it could laid on Mitch. The leopard latched its front paws around me using its hind legs to claw at my underbelly while it hissed and spit at me. I ignored the burning pain as I bit down on its throat, sinking my canines into its soft flesh. The salty, metallic taste coated my tongue. The leopard rolled on top of my, its weight squeezing the air out of me. I lost my grip on its throat as the leopard bit down on my shoulder. I let out a yelp and I slammed my paw into its face and tried to push it off me. It slammed its paw onto my chest, pressing down onto my ribs and digging its claws into my flesh. I whimpered and used my hind legs and the rest of my strength to kick the leopard off of me. I stumbled to my paws and staggered to a position between Mitch and the leopard. The leopard shot out a paw and from the blood loss, I was too slow and it connected with my head. I rolled across the ground. I phased back not caring about the others seeing me naked. I tried to get up but I didn't have enough strength. It was stupid for me to think that a wolf could beat a leopard in a fight.

"Oh, my God." Mitch. That was Mitch's voice. He was still alive. "Calla." He rolled me onto my back and I flinched and cried out in pain. His hands moved down my body, examining the wounds.

"I'm fine." I managed to choke out.

"Calla, you are far from even being close to fine. You have lacerations all over your body, you might have a few cracked ribs and you might even have a concussion."

"You guys need to go after the leopards. I'll be fine."

"I'm not leaving you, Calla. Somebody get me the first aid kit." My eyes grew heavy and I shut them. "Calla, you need to open your eyes."

"I'm tired."

"I can't let you sleep. Not right now."

"Please, Mitch, just for a few minutes."

"Jackson, press this onto her stomach. I need clean water and some alcohol if we have any." Pressure was applied to my stomach and I cried out but I didn't open my eyes. "Come on, Calla. Please. Hey, we hardly know anything about each other. So, uh, where did you grow up?" His voice was getting distant as my throbbing headache got worse and worse. "Come on, Calla, where did you grow up?"

"Ohio." My voice came out in barely a whisper as he cleaned the wounds on my chest and began to stitch them.

"Go buckeyes." I let out a laugh. "How many times have you moved in your entire life?" I groaned. He was making me think. Making me work so I would stay awake. "Calla."

"Uh. . . thirteen times."

"How bad is her stomach wound? What's your favorite color, Calla?"

"Deep, but I don't see any internal damage." I heard Jackson said.

"We'll stitch it up and hope for the best. Calla?" I squinted my eyes trying to think. What was my favorite color? I couldn't remember. "Callana? Callana, what's your favorite color?"

"I—I don't remember." I said.

"Do you have a favorite color?"

"Yes."

"Then what is it?" I slowly shook my head not able to form any words.

"That's not a good sign." Abraham said.

"Hey, what's your name?"

"C—Cal-Callana Lil-Lillian Rhycho." I slowly opened my eyes to see Mitch's smile as he continued working on my chest. "What's so funny?"

"Your name is Callana Lillian."

"And?"

"Calla Lily." I smiled at that thought. I never thought about that. My entire life I have never thought about the flower that would go with my name.

"Calla Lily. They're so pretty."

"Yes, they are. Just like you. I'm done with her chest. Jamie, come help me. I have to wrap this bandage around her. I'm positive that she has some cracked ribs so I need you to very carefully just lift her up. Make sure she bends at the waist not her abdomen. Small hands wrapped around the base of my neck and my lower back and I was slowly lifted up. Agony rippled through my front as I cried out.

"Mitchell," I grinded my teeth hoping that I would just die already so the pain would end. Mitch began to wrap the bandage around my chest, and at least he was covering my breasts.

"Okay, lay her back down. Jamie, go get her some clean clothes while I look at her stomach."

"Can I please go to sleep now?"

"No. That is the last thing you can do." A burning sensation ripped through my stomach. I tried to raise my hands to push Mitch away but he swatted my hands. "Sorry, Calla, gotta clean the wound. So, where did you study?"

"What?"

"You know a lot about big cats. So, where did you study?"

"I went to Ohio University for Vet Tech." I felt Mitch's hands pause for a second before he continued to stich me back up.

"You didn't tell me you had a veterinarian degree."

"That's because I don't. I dropped out in my last semester. It didn't seem right to keep going to college with my condition."

"That's a shame. You would have made a great veterinarian, Dr. Rycho." I smiled at that. "Okay, done with the stomach." He gingerly started to slip me into some clothes that Jamie brought over after he bandaged my stomach. "Let's look at that head." He barely touched my head and I winched. He got a cloth and poured some water on it and began to clean the drying blood off me. "Good news is, I don't think you have a concussion. Bad news is, you're going to have a major headache for a while."

"Hurray for me. Can I sleep now?" Mitch was silent for a moment.

"Can you do something first?" I groaned. "Come on, let's go to the back of the car so you can lay down." He helped me up and I leaned against him as he guided me to the car. I gradually climbed into the car with him behind me and he got in and sat sideways with his legs stretched out. I laid down and placed my head in his lap and immediately fell asleep.

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I woke up to see that it was still dark. The car jolted around on the dirt road and it reminded me of my recent wounds as the burning feeling filled my wounds. My eyes fluttered as I adjusted to my surroundings and my eyes found Mitch's face. I stirred trying to sit up but as soon as I began to move, Mitch stopped me.

"You should be moving, Calla." He warned me but I pushed his hands aside and forced myself to sit up, wincing at the movement of my wounds.

"I can't sit still." I muttered, grabbing my stomach as if it would somehow make me feel better. "Besides, I'm fine, Mitch." His lips tightened as he thought about whether to argue with me but for once, he didn't. Instead, he looked to Abraham and Jackson who were in the front seats of the car.

"Maybe somebody should say something about him. Ray. I mean. . . nobody should die without words being spoken, right?" It was silent for a moment before Abraham sighed and began to speak.

"Ray was. . . obnoxious, loud and stubborn." Abraham said. "But he was passionate. And he cared more about animals on this Earth than any man I've ever met." It was quiet for another moment.

"Looks like the trail's run out." Jackson broke the silence. "We lost him."

"Okay. . . team." Mitch addressed us. "What now?"

"Let's make camp for the night. We can pick up the trail when it gets light out."

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"We lost the tranq gun so we'll make our own." Abraham said as we continued our hunt the next morning. "It's not quite ketamine, but it should do the trick." Abraham had found some kind of root and Mitch was in the back of the car making a cocktail out of it. "The locals have used the root for hundreds of years to get drunk, so hopefully it's enough to knock out a leopard."

"That's the most disgusting thing I ever smelled in my life." Jamie complained, scrunching up her face in disgust.

"Okay." Mitch said as he finished and sucked the liquid up into a syringe. He held the needle over his mouth, ready to taste it. I quickly pulled it away from his mouth and glared at him.

"I thought doctors are supposed to be smart, not retarded." I snapped at him as he pulled his hand from my grip.

"Relax. It's for science." He quickly squirted some into his mouth and immediately cringed at the taste. "Mm. Tingles. Hope it does more than that to the leopard."

"Stop the truck." Jackson ordered and Abraham slowly put the car in park. "Right up there." I looked to see where Jackson was pointing out the window. "You see those trees? With the rocks. The rocks along the base."

"Looks like their den." I confirmed. We got out of the car. I grabbed onto the side of the car to steady myself. Abraham grunted as he ripped off one of the bars from the roof of the car. He took the syringe from Mitch and tied it to the tip of the bar.

"If we can isolate one leopard from the group, we may have a chance."

"What if we can't?" Jamie asked. Jackson didn't answer. I started to follow after Abraham and Jackson but Mitch pulled me back. I cried out as the sudden jerk resonated through my cuts.

"You're staying here." Mitch ordered me.

"They may need my help." I objected.

"Calla, you need to rest. I don't know how many times I have to tell you."

"And I don't know how many times I have to tell you, I'm fine." Mitch and I stared hard at each other for a moment before his eyes soften a little.

"Calla, please, stay." The tone of his voice made me back down and relax. All my emotions were washed away as I sighed and went to go sit on the edge of the car.

"If they don't come back. . ." Jamie began to talk but Mitch stopped her.

"Yeah, let's just. . . not think about that." It was a few moments before Abraham and Jackson came back.

"We need Callana." Jackson said.

"Why?" Mitch and I inquired at the same time.

"There's a female leopard inside the den. She's by herself meaning that there has to be a cub inside. Once the leopard leaves the den, we need Callana to go in and grab the cub. A cub will be a lot easier than handling an adult. Use your wolf side."

"I don't have a control over that, Jackson." I told him, looking at the ground. "It comes out of adrenaline rush or anger and instinct. And right she's not giving a damn about what's going on." Jackson placed a hand on the roof of the car and smirked.

"Well, does she give a damn about what happens to Mitch?" My head popped up and I glared at Jackson, my eyes glowing and a growl resonating in my chest. He woken the beast and she wasn't happy.

"Why? You threatening him?" Jackson casually shrugged his shoulder as if he wasn't seconds away from being ripped to shreds.

"Just saying, we don't get this leopard, we don't make a cure and there'll be an increase in animal aggression causing more attacks. Possibly an attack on Mitch." I phased, growling and snarling at Jackson. I snorted, baring my teeth at him. I shook my fur and pawed at the ground. I followed behind Abraham and Jackson through the tall grass and we stopped when we got to the edge. I crouched low to the ground but high enough where my chest and stomach didn't rub the ground. Leaves rustled within the den and the female leopard appeared. She stayed the entrance and looked around for a moment before she stalked off in the opposite direction from us. I crept forward, walking on my tiptoes and shimmied my way down into the den. I closed my eyes and hung my head as I pushed past the overhanging branches. When I opened them, I let out a surprised yelp as I stared at Ray's dead body in the den. I was stunned and didn't move a muscle until I heard a mewling noise. I looked to the right and a tiny cub poked his head out from behind a rock. I slowly walked over to him and picked him up by the scruff in my mouth. I hurried out of the den and rushed past Abraham and Jackson and back to the car. Mitch took the leopard from me and I hopped up into the car as Abraham and Jackson got into the front seats and drove away.

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I laid on my side in the very back of the car. It was the only thing I could do. I couldn't shift back because I didn't have any clothes and I couldn't sit up because it stretched my wounds and burn like a bitch. My leopard cub started climbing on my side and I raised my head enough to snap it, my teeth clicking together as my mouth shut. The cub let out a yowl and swatted at my nose with its tiny paw. I growled at it and Jamie picked it up and moved it away from me. I laid my head back down and gave a heavy sigh. The car came to a stop and I slowly pushed myself up to see why we were stopping. We were at the river but the bridge to take us across was gone. We got out of the car and walked over to the rope to see that its been chewed.

"What happened to the bridge?" Jamie asked.

"The rope's been chewed." Abraham said. "We're going to have to drive the long way around the river."

"If we drive the long way around the river, we have to drive through the Ndube Army's territory." Jackson informed him.

"The Ndube Army?" Jamie inquired. "I'm guessing that's not a real army, right?"

"From from it. Think of an African Hells Angels. Except instead of motorcycles and leather jackets, they have rifles and machetes."

"There's no other way." Abraham said.

"Course there isn't." Mitch retorted.

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"Hey, we sure this is the best plan?" Mitch asked as Jamie tried to feed the cub a piece of meat. "I mean, maybe we should just drive fast, get the hell through here, and not worry about the engine noise."

"No." Abraham said. "We should stay quiet." A phone started ringing and Mitch pulled a cellphone out of the bag.

"It's Chloe's phone. Must've left in my pack." Jackson took the phone from him and answered it.

"Hello?" Jackson answered. "This is Jackson Oz. I'm friend of Chloe's. Who is this?—She's been arrested. She's fine though. She's safe. She's. . . she's in FBI custody. . . What do you mean? How do you know that?"

"What's going on?" Jamie inquired.

"She didn't kill that agent. . . Has Chloe. . . Yes, I—I will. Of course. You do the same." Jackson hung up.

"What is it?"

"That Fed, Brannigan—he was killed."

"Reiden. It had to be Reiden."

"If that is the case, then what have they done with Chloe?" Abraham questioned us.

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I bent my head down as far as I could and began to lick my chest wounds. The cooling sensation making me sigh in relief until Mitch swatted my nose. I half-heartedly snapped at him and whined.

"Stop." He ordered. "You'll open up your stitches and right now those have to last you until we get back home where I have proper supplies." I let out a loud whiny bark and shook my head. "Don't argue with me, Calla." I sniffed and hung my head. Another car appeared in front of us and headed straight towards us. Abraham stopped and began to back up trying to get away but a car came up from behind to block us in.

"Get down, Callana." Abraham snapped. "They see you, they'll skin you and sell your pelt." I immediately crouched to the ground and placed my chin on Mitch's lap. Each one of the cars were loaded with men with AK47s. They shot off a couple rounds as a scare tactic before they got out of the cars shouting. They started speaking Swahili as Abraham got out of the car with his hands up in surrender as he spoke calmly to them in Swahili. The leader of the men waved a machete at Abraham shouting in Swahili at him.

"What is he saying?" Jamie asked.

"I have no idea." Jackson answered. A couple men walked up to Abraham and began to push him to their car but Jackson got out of the car and yelled at them. "No, no!"

"Jackson!"

"No. Don't hurt him. All right? Take me. Take me. Don't hurt him."

"It's okay." Abraham assured him. "They're not going to hurt me. They think we have money or. . . or that we are worth money."

"Who would want to pay for us?"

"We know that, but they don't." Jamie turned to Mitch.

"What do we do?" Jamie inquired. "We have no guns, we have no money, we have nothing."

"We have him." Mitch said, pointing to the leopard cub.

"What are we gonna do, sic a kitten on them?"

"The needle on Abe's spear—hand it to me." Jamie handed him the syringe and he gently poked the cub hard enough for it to start mewling in pain. Soldiers started shouting and the back doors of the truck opened. "Hey, what are you doing?" Hands grabbed a handful of my scruff and I let out a yelp as I was dragged out of the car. "No! No! Calla!" Another couple men grabbed Jamie and pulled her out too. "Jamie!" I twisted and turned in the men's grasp and they threw me to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I heard a grunt come from Mitch and I turned to see one of the men hit him in the stomach with the butt of a gun. I got to my paws and lunged at the man and he fired off his gun. I ducked underneath the gun, missing the bullet and dived at his ankles, gnawing at the thin skin on the bone and hobbling him before I went to the throat to finish the kill. Before I could move onto the next man, a growl sounded and leopards started to come out of the jungle. There was at least eight of them and they started to attack the men. The men started shooting at the leopards losing focus on us. I ushered Jamie back into the truck and I hopped in behind her as Abraham and Jackson got back in too and we drove away. My front legs shook as I tried to keep myself upright but they gave out and I collapsed into Mitch's lap. He pulled me close into him, stroking my neck.

"That was great what you did back there." Jamie told Mitch.

"What?" Mitch asked.

"What you did with the cub."

"What are you talking about?" Abraham inquired.

"Mitch stuck the cub with a needle. His pain sent a distress call." My vision got blurry and my head throbbed as my surroundings began to spin. "It was just like the lion in L.A. They communicate over long distances."

"Oh, that was you!"

"Yeah, I just put their newfound mutation to good use." Mitch said, shrugging.

"This little guy saved our lives." Jamie laughed and the cub mewled.

"We did it, _rafiki."_ Abraham said to Jackson but Jackson didn't answer him. "Ah, man, you saved my life. I think. . . What. . . what happened?"

"It's okay." Jackson choked out.

"Wha-what happened?!"

"Oh, my God!" Jamie cried out. "Jackson, you've been shot."

"Watch out, Calla." Mitch said as he hastily but gingerly pushed me off his lap and onto the car floor so he could tend to Jackson. "Let me see, let me see." I tilted my head watching his movements as he took off his flannel and handed it to Jackson. "All right, here. Keep that over the wound. Press down, press down. We got to get him to a hospital."

"Hold on, _rafiki._ Hold on. You're going to make it, _rafiki._ Hold on." I didn't realize that my eyes were closed until Mitch spoke to me.

"Come on, Calla." I didn't move. I was too tired, exhausted. "Calla?" His voice became distant and it became easier to ignore. "Callana?" It was when a hand touched my fur on my underbelly that I realized my fur was caked with blood. "Her stitches opened up. She's bleeding out. Jamie, hand me something to hold over this. Abraham, can you go any faster? Come on, Calla, stay with me. Stay with me, Calla. Stay with me."


	10. Chapter 10

"Looks like we're ten miles from the hospital." Jamie said after Mitch switched places with Abraham. Abraham was keeping pressure on Jackson's wounds while Jamie was tending to me.

"How are they doing?" Mitch asked from the front seat. Jackson gasped and groaned next to me. My breathing was becoming shallow but I kept fighting to stay alive. For him. I was fighting to stay alive for Mitch. I can't lose him now.

"Not so good." Abraham said as Jamie applied more pressure to my wounds and I let out a whimper. "We're close, my friend." Jackson groaned weakly. "The blood. . . the blood is coming through the shirt."

"On who?"

"Both of them."

"Keep pressure on it—nice and even. Don't let them pass out." Mitch ordered as Jackson coughed.

"Maybe we should pull over." Jamie said.

"Lot of things I can handle in a pinch. Kind of surgery they need—not one of 'em." The leopard cub began to growl.

"The cub is impatient, Rafiki." Abraham told Jackson as he gasped and coughed. "You need to give him a name. Maybe a musical name, considering how much noise he makes. Perhaps Bono or Bowie?"

"What do you think, Callana?" Jamie asked me. I whined loudly and growled. "I don't speak wolf."

"Wolves die alone." Mitch informed her. "She's going to be grumpy. She thinks she's dying but not if I can help it."

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Abraham helped Mitch drag me out of the car and onto a stretcher, my paws slightly hanging off the edge. Abraham went back to help Jackson out while Jamie grabbed the electroporator and the leopard and Mitch wheeled me to the front doors of the hospital with Abraham and Jackson behind us. The doors were locked.

"Open the door!" Abraham yelled through the glass. "It's an emergency. My friend needs a doctor!" One of the doors opened and a doctor poked his head out.

"The hospital is closed." The doctor said. Abraham pushed past the doctor and guided Jackson inside and over to a stretcher. Mitch pushed me in and wheeled me over to Jackson. "Did you hear what I said? We are abandoning the hospital."

"We don't have time." Mitch said. "This man's been shot and this wolf has been attacked by leopards."

"I can't help. I suggest you drive him to Nyanga."

"That's four hours at least!" Abraham yelled.

"I have lost a dozen colleagues and more patients than I can count. I am sorry, but I cannot help you."

"You will help him! You understand me?"

"The last ambulance leaves in an hour. I will do the surgery, but beyond that, you are on your own."

"Thank you."

"Jamie, come with me." Mitch said. "I'm going to need extra hands with Calla. Can I get a pair of scrubs too?"

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"The hematology lab should have what we need to extract this little guy's stem cells, formulate a cure." Mitch said after he coaxed me into phasing again and helping me into the scrubs that the doctor gave him. "Along with supplies to get Calla back to health."

"Hurry, Mitch." Jamie said. "I think he's getting scared." Abraham came back in my blurry vision.

"We're heading to hematology. Come on."

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The elevator bell rang and I groaned. I raised my head to the throbbing pain that was growing.

"Mitch," I groaned. His hand ran down the side of my face.

"Stay behind me." Abraham ordered as the elevator doors opened and Mitch pushed the stretcher through the doors.

"I'm going to need some O-Negative blood for her." Mitch said. "She's lost a lot." We finally got to the hematology lab and Mitch pushed the stretcher to the side of the room. "Abe, go see if you can find me some anesthesia and blood." I didn't even feel the needle going into my arm as Mitch hooked an IV up to me.

"Here, Mitch."

"Okay, um. . . Hey, Calla, can you open your eyes for me?"

"Can you stop asking that?" I croaked.

"I'm sorry. Your eyes are beautiful. Can't get enough of them." I opened my eyes and looked at him to see him looking around the room before walking over to the cub. "Okay, pal, I'm gonna need one of your teeth, so I can extract some stem cells. Uh. . . Hand me that rubber heart over there."

"Why?" Jamie asked as she did as she was told.

"Because. No need to hurt him if we don't have to. So. . . I'll just take this. . . rub little flavor on it. Here you go." He gave the cub the heart and it began chewing on it.

"Ah, I see." Abraham said as Mitch went over to the sink and began scrubbing his hands clean. "You're going to let the cub remove its own tooth."

"Exactly. So, uh. . . assuming I can formulate a cure, we're gonna need an animal we test it on."

"Why not test it on Callana?" Jamie asked

"Calla is in no condition to be tested on right now."

"Even if the cure works, wild animals still act wild. We're going to need a domesticated one."

"That way we'll have a clear behavioral baseline. I. . ."

"Okay, so. . . don't open this door until I return."

"What?" Jamie exclaimed as Mitch pulled on blue rubber gloves. "No, you. . . Abe!"

"I'm going to be okay."

"Be careful." Mitch came walking over to my side.

"Okay, you ready, Calla?" Mitch asked me.

"Is this surgery even worth it?" I shot back at him. "Am I going to make it?"

"Of course, you are. Come on, wolf form."

"Why make me shift to human if I have to go back to wolf?"

"Because it's really not a good image for a wolf being carted around a hospital when animals are the number enemy in the world right now."

"Point taken." I closed my eyes and sighed as I tried to summon my wolf. _Come on, come on. If you don't come out, then you're going to die. So, please, just this once, come out when I ask you to._ My bones shifted and my lungs grew and the sudden increase of air intake was refreshing.

"Perfect." He placed the anesthesia mask over my muzzle. "See you when you wake up." I dozed off to nothing.

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I stirred awake and blinked my eyes several times before my eyes landed on Mitch who was across the room peering into a microscope.

"Mitch, she's awake." Jamie said and Mitch was out of his seat in a second and over to my side. He covered me with a blanket and I shifted. Hopefully I would stay in this form for a while. My skin was getting tired from stretching.

"How are you feeling, Calla?" He asked me as he ran his fingers through my hair.

"Sore more than anything." I answered honestly. "Dr. Morgan, may I sit up?" He squinted his eyes at me but smiled at my manners.

"As long as you don't try saving anyone's life anytime soon." He handed me a pair of scrubs and took the blanket off me and held it up so it acted like a curtain so I could get dressed. I moved slowly and gingerly as I slipped my legs into the pants and threw the shirt over my head. He dropped the blanket and leaned down, cupped my cheeks and kissed my forehead. "I told you that you would make it." I gripped his biceps and closed my eyes, taking in his presence and how happy I was from him being so close to me. I pulled slightly away from him and looked up at him.

"How's the cure coming along?" He straightened up after giving me another kiss on the forehead and stuffing his hands into his front pockets. "Good news, we have viable stem cells here. So, our little friend has done his part."

"He's crying so much." I muttered, scooting off the bed. My feet touched the ground and my legs automatically buckled underneath me but Mitch was quick enough to catch me. "I'm fine. I'm fine." Mitch held onto my arm until I got balance again and I slowly made my way over to the cub who was mewling loudly in the bag. I touched its soft golden fur and scratched its head.

"You don't think it's a call, do you?" Jamie asked.

"No. A call would be more high pitch and constant. This is more like an agitated mewl."

"Why don't you try closing the bag?" Mitch said. "Maybe he shares my aversion to hospitals." I rolled my eyes and handed the cub to Jamie.

"Entertain him." I walked to the other side of the room as Mitch messed around with microscope some more.

"Is that why you dropped out of med school?" Jamie asked.

"No." Mitch answered. "I never liked hospitals. But I think it was the patients that finally did me in. Calla, will you hand me one of those cuvettes over there?" I reached over and grabbed a square tube and winced as my stomach wound stretched. "I should have asked Jamie. Sorry, Calla."

"I'm fine. I can help, Mitch." I said.

"I didn't hate the patients. I just. . . hated their pain. Their tears. And their families' tears. You shut down your emotions for long enough, you don't want to spend all day with somebody else's."

"Does it both you when I talk about my mother?" Jamie inquired. Mitch sighed as he thought about it.

"It did. When we first met. But. . . I'm okay with it now." Mitch got up and fired the electroporator and it whirred and beeped. Jamie went back to playing with the cub and Mitch walked over to me while he let the electroporator do its work. "So, there's something I got to say. And I better say it now, before this whole thing goes south. I want to thank you for giving me the courage to save my daughter. And for reminding me that. . . that it's okay to feel and. . . I know that you're always trying to save me but, truth is, you already saved me. Callana Rhycho, I am madly in love you. I know we only met a few months ago but you have a way of making me fall head over heels for you every time I see you." I stared blankly up at him as my chest felt like it was caving in on itself. How do I respond to that? The electroporator beeping saved me as Mitch walked over to it. "All right. Well, here we go. This is it. Hope to God we were right." Something caught my sense of hearing and I straightened perking my ears up as I listened to the noise out in the hallway.

"I have to find Jackson." Jamie said and she walked over to the door and reached for the doorknob.

"Jamie, wait!" I yelled to her but it was too late. The door swung open and a leopard roared at Jamie. She gasped and stumbled back and around the table. I charged forward but Mitch put up his arm and kept me behind him as he grabbed the cure from the electroporator and started backing up as the leopard prowled into the room. The leopard growled at Jamie as she grabbed the bag with the cub in it. Mitch reached for the fire alarm.

"Mitch, wait, the Mother Cell."

"Forget it." Mitch said as the alarm wailed and the water sprinklers came on, distracting the leopard for a split second but a split second was all we needed. We turned and raced for the door, closing the door behind us and locking the leopard inside. I leaned up against a wall, panting for breath as I clutched my chest, sharp pains rippling through me. "Are you okay?" I nodded.

"I just need to catch my breath." Abraham came around the corner.

"What's happened?" He asked.

"The leopards." Mitch explained. "They came after the cub."

"Abe, we lost the Mother Cell." Jamie said.

"And the cure?" Abraham inquired and Mitch held it up for him to see.

"This is it." Mitch said. "It's all we got. One shot, maybe two."

"Okay. I found a dog, and I put him in one of the patient rooms."

"If this doesn't work. . ." I began to speak.

"There's only one way to find out."

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"First, the birds." Abraham said as the mutt barked at us and tried to lunge at us as we stood around him. "Now the leopards. It's no coincidence. They're after the cub."

"All right, this is it." Mitch said as he prepared the serum. "No room for mistakes." The dog continued to bark and snarl at us. "Ready?" Jamie and Abraham held the chains steady while Mitch came up from behind the dog and injected the serum into his hindquarters. The dog whimpered and then continued to bark, trying to turn around to get to Mitch.

"How long does it take to work?" Jamie asked. The dog still barked.

"I don't know." The mutt snarled, trying his best to get a bite out of at least one of us. Jamie's phone began ringing and she answered it.

"Hello? Who is this?. . . Chloe, oh, my God. Are you okay?. . . Uh, we're—we're fine. We—we found a cub. . . Uh, we're at a hospital in Harare. We're—we're actually testing the cure right now. Wait, where are you?. . . Listen, Chloe, um, something happened. Callana and Jackson got hurt. They're going to be fine, but—but. . ." Jamie put down the phone. "She hung up."

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Mitch and I stood side by side outside the room looking through the door glass at the still snarling dog.

"Something should be happening by now." I muttered.

"Yeah, if it was gonna work, we'd have seen some evidence by now." Mitch agreed, disappointment and agitation coating his tone and he sighed. "Sorry, guys. This is all my fault." I turned my head and glared at him. How dare he throw himself a pity party?

"It's no one's fault." Abraham said.

"Yeah, I. . . I'm the one who told you all that the leopard cub was the—the answer. I'm the one who said the Mother Cell was the key to the cure. It was just a theory. Not even a theory. Half a theory." Abraham stared at him for a moment.

"Now's not the time for self-pity."

"It didn't work."

"Tell me why."

"Okay. Should I start with the fact that I'm not a geneticist? Or should I start with the fact that somehow I got it into my brain that a completely discredited scientist by the name of Robert Oz was anything other than certifiably insane?"

"Ancient history." Abraham got up and started walking over to Mitch and I let out a growl but immediately had to steady myself against the wall as the rush of wolf made me light headed. "Relax, Callana, I promise I'm not going to do anything. Tell me why you failed today."

"Easy, Abe." I snapped. "He tried."

"Stop. Let him speak. Tell me why you failed."

"I don't know." Mitch said impatiently. "Why don't you tell me, genius? Maybe the Mother Cell was contaminated. But it's—it's—it's hard, organic substance. So that's highly unlikely. Maybe the—the. . . cub's gene didn't mutate naturally like we thought it did, but there is no way that it traveled far enough to—to be exposed to Reiden, so that's a big fat no. If my hypothesis is sound, a—and none of the elements were contaminated, then I don't know, maybe it's the—the. . . maybe it was the delivery system."

"The delivery system?" Mitch stopped speaking as he thought about it for a moment and I saw his eyes light up as it clicked in his mind.

"Yeah. The. . . the injection. The—the. . . the needle, maybe the needle was contaminated. The. . . or. . ."

"Or what?" Jamie inquired and Mitch sighed.

"Intramuscular injections usually disseminate quickly, but. . . but it's—it's possible that. . . it's possible it never even made it out of the dog's flank. And if it didn't make it out of its flank, then that means it didn't get to the brain, and maybe that's it, maybe. . ."

"Maybe we need to introduce it orally." I finished for him and he nodded in agreement.

"Maybe we need to do that before the cub's pack finds us." Abraham suggested.

"Do we have enough left?" Jamie questioned Mitch and he sighed.

"We're gonna find out." Mitch declared. "And, uh. . . don't think I don't recognize what you just did there."

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"Sorry, buddy." Mitch said to the dog as he stood in front of the snarling dog. "We need you one more time. Got him?" Jamie and Abraham both nodded as Mitch crouched down in front of the dog. When the dog lunged at Mitch, he squirted the serum into his mouth and backed away. The dog continued to bark and snarl at us.

"Mitch, I don't know." Jamie said. "I don't think it's working." The dog gave a few more barks before he whined quietly and sat back on his haunches and started panting. Jamie and Abraham had to sit down in shock as the dog whined again. He whined as Mitch slowly walked over him and pet his head. The dog licked Mitch's hand, happy for the affection.

"Good boy. Good boy. You better find Jackson. We gotta get this stuff home."

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I limped down the hallway, clutching my stomach and using the wall as my support. Mitch turned around and then handed the leopard to Jamie. He walked over to me and swept me off my feet and into his arms. I flinched as my stomach wound was pressed together but I settled into the comfort of Mitch's arms.

"You're surprisingly lighter than I expected." Mitch chuckled as we continued our way down the hallway.

"You calling me fat?" I said, punching him playfully in the chest and he just let out his deep chuckle. But the happy moment was short lived as a ferocious growled echoed through the hallway and a leopard appeared in front of us. I struggled to get down from Mitch's arms but I was too weak right now to push out of his hold. "I can take her."

"Calla, you just got out of surgery. You're not doing a damn thing."

"Do you have any other idea?" Another leopard appeared behind us.

"Jamie, don't move."

"Do we run?" Jamie whispered to us and I shook my head, eyeing the leopards.

"They'll pounce on you before you even take one step." I whispered back to her. The leopards roared and growled at us as they stalked towards us. Glass shattered and gunshots sounded and Mitch immediately dropped to the ground and covered me with his body. Soldiers came rushing into the hospital and shot the leopards with tranq darts.

"Secure!" One of the soldiers yelled and I buried my head into Mitch's soldier in relief.

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"Not that we're incredibly grateful, but where the hell did you guys come from?" Mitch asked one of the soldiers as he set me gently on my feet outside the hospital. Clung to his arm for support, not ready to trust myself on my own yet.

"We're the 74th Special Tactic Squadron." The soldier replied. "Our orders are to get you out of here."

"Jackson!" Jamie yelled and I looked up to see him behind one of the military cars with Abraham. We met up with them halfway.

"How are you feeling, Callana?" Jackson inquired.

"Like I've mauled by a leopard." I answered. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been shot." We shared a laugh before Jackson turned to the soldier. "How'd you know that we were here?"

"All I'm authorized to say is your location was provided by a French national." The solider told him. "But we're gonna get you to Johannesburg, and from there on a flight to DC."

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I walked down the aisle of the plane to the back where Mitch was pouring himself a drink. He chugged it and then looked guilty over at me and I couldn't help but laugh as he looked like a kid that just got caught red handed for sticking his hand in the cookie jar.

"Hi." He said.

"Hi." I greeted him, my smile still plastered on my face.

"I was just pilfering some of these. . . adorable little bottles that haven't grown up yet. Would you like one?"

"Absolutely." He opened a small bottle for me and handed it to me and I took a large swig from it welcoming the burning sensation in the back of my throat. Mitch opened his mouth to speak but I stood up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his. He set his bottle down on the counter and grabbed my face with both hands, deepening the kiss. He pulled back and I rocked back down on my heels and he leaned down to press his forehead to mine.

"God, I love you, Calla." I smiled and closed my eyes.

"I love you too."

"Marry me." My eyes snapped open and I looked up at him. I tried to look for signs of it being a joke but he looked serious.

"Mitch,"

"Please, Calla, make me the happiest man in the world and marry me. I couldn't imagine the point of living without you. So, marry me." I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. My mind was going a hundred miles an hour. Marry Mitchell Morgan? I loved him and I didn't want to lose him. But marry him? Logically,. . . No, don't think logically. For once don't think logically. For the past months, I had protected Mitch from any harm and I did it without a second thought and if that wasn't love then I don't know what is.

"Yes."

"Yes? Calla, don't mess with me on this."

"Yes, I'll marry you, Mitchell Morgan."

"God, I don't know what I did to deserve you."

"I could say the same." The plane made a loud rattle and thump as it shook violently. I turned around and looked back down the aisle.

"Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain." The captain said over the speakers. "We've been informed that due to some unusual migratory behavior, this airspace has been closed. We've been diverted to. . ."

"What migratory behavior?" Mitch wondered behind me and as I turned around to face him, the shook again more violently and a cold air filled the plane. I was knocked off my feet and my head thumped against the hard floor, knocking me unconscious.


	11. Chapter 11

I woke up with a start and looked around my surroundings. My vision was blurry for a second until they adjusted to the daylight. Daylight? I was on a plane and it was nightfall. My mind whirred as the gears began to work and I placed my memories together. Crash. We were on a plane and it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. So why was I here in the daylight? Shouldn't I have drowned? I tilted my head down and examined my body. I was in my wolf form. My chest and stomach wounds were healed. All that was left was bald spots where the scars showed. Wait a minute. I just had surgery. No way the wounds would have healed that fast. I scrambled to my paws but immediately collapsed as my muscles screamed at me. They were stiff. I laid on my stomach and looked around. I was in a chain link cage. A kennel. A few yards away was another cage with a leopard inside. I stared hard at the leopard and notice that it had the same facial markings as the leopard cub we found. I stare wide eyes at him as I pieced it together. That couldn't be the cub. This leopard was almost in adult hood so it couldn't be the cub, could it? How long have I been asleep? Directly in front of me was a two story house with a chain link fence around the perimeter of the property. I stretched out each leg before standing back up and shaking my fur.

"Callana?" I looked around to see Jamie walking down the back steps of the house. Jamie! I rushed over to the side of the cage and balanced myself on my hind legs and placed my front paws on the chain links. She had some clothes in her hand. "I have some clothes for you if you want to phase back and I'll explain what's going on." I hopped down and tried to summon for my human side but it wasn't there. I couldn't find it. I couldn't feel it. I out a whiny bark and snorted as I backed up. "Can you not shift?" I shook my head and sat back on my haunches. "Great. Another problem for Mitch to solve." My ears perked up at the name and I raced forward and leapt onto the fence, startling Jamie that she stumbled back. I let out continuous barks wanting to know where my fiancé was. "Callana, please, shh. Mitch isn't here." She walked around to the door of the kennel and walked in. She came over to me and sat in front of me and I sat down too. "I have no idea where Mitch is. I was actually just about to call him when I came out here but then I saw that you were awake." She pulled a phone out of her pocket and I rushed forward, nuzzling her hand, whining, trying to get her to hurry up with the phone call. "Wait, Callana, there's more that you have to know before we call Mitch." I whined but sat back. Jamie sighed before she hung her head. "Callana, you've been in a coma for three months. So have I. But while you were in your coma. . ." Her voice trailed off and I army crawled towards her and nuzzled her knee. "Callana, you had a baby." That got me to my paws faster than a black snake could bite. I barked at her while I circled around her. Baby? I was pregnant? Can't be. I was only out for three months and I had no signs that I was pregnant before the crash. I stopped in midstep as it dawned on me. I now know why I couldn't shift back to human form. My wolf took over my pregnancy and a wolf's gestation was only sixty-two days, two months. So my baby would be a month old right now. But how did I get pregnant. . . I sighed and rolled my eyes. The night I got attacked by the leopards. I walked back over to Jamie and I barked at Jamie and looked around at my surroundings then back at her. "We're in New Brunswick, Canada." Canada?! "A nice old man found us and brought us here. He's been taking really good care of us while we were in the comas. And he even saved the leopard." Jamie fingerings the numbers on the phone and began dialing. My tail began to wag a hundred miles an hour. A couple rings passed before I heard the voice that's been haunting my dreams.

"Mitch Morgan, totally awesome scientist." He answered.

"Mitch. Mitch, can you hear me? It' me. It's Jamie." It was quiet for a moment.

"No, it isn't. Jamie's dead. Uh, who—who. . . who is this? You don't even. . . you don't even sound like her."

"Okay, are you gonna stop being an ass for a second and listen to me? It is me, I am alive, and. . . and I'm really glad you are too." I stood up and backed up a couple steps. I barked a couple of times and raised my head to the sky and let a howl rang through the trees. "Do you hear that, Mitch? That's Callana. She's here too. She's alive."

"Calla?" I gave a confirmation bark, wagging my tail.

"Um. . ."

"It really is you." Mitch said on the other line.

"It's really good to hear your voice."

"It's really good to hear yours too."

"I still have it. I have the leopard, I have the cure."

"Okay, uh. . . you still have it." I heard Mitch laughing and I laid on the ground and placed my head on my paws, looking up at the phone as I imagined his face on he laughed.


End file.
